Wade Hamilton's Birthright
by justincbenedict
Summary: Wade, Scarlett O'Hara's oldest son is a young gay man in 1880 Atlanta. Beau, Melanie and Ashley's son, is bright but handicapped, and Rhett Butler is starting a new and interesting business venture. And Scarlett, as always, can't keep her hands off other women's men.
1. Chapter 1

Wade Hampton Hamilton turned over in his bed and looked at the slumbering Hugh Elsing. What a beautiful man. Wade was ashamed at this thought, but Hugh was quite dashing. At one time he'd been emotionally drawn, working as a wagon driver for Mother's sawmill, but now Hugh was practicing law and seemed to be enjoying life, and certainly Wade and Hugh enjoyed each other's company.

Wade shook his head and grinned. He'd been here all night, but even if Mother had not been out of town, she wouldn't have noticed Wade's keeping late hours. When Wade stayed over at Aunt Pittypat's, the old lady was quite concerned when Wade came in after ten, but Mother never seemed to let things like this bother her.

"A boy needs a social life" Mother would say. Perhaps Mother remembered her overprotected and chaperoned girlhood when she'd been a young belle at Tara.

"It was all such nonsense" Scarlett had told Wade once. "The last good ball we had was after the Wilkes barbecue, and my little sister was forbidden to go because she wasn't yet fourteen."

Wade had been about that age—fourteen, when Uncle Peter, Pittypat's old darky had caught Wade with a neighbor boy in the carriage house, both of them quite undressed.

But Uncle Peter had realized that it would cause more grief than good to mention it anywhere.

Mother wasn't home right now. She was staying at Tara. The store was being run by Wade's Uncle Ashley, who was little more than drunk these days. Wade quite often had to go over Ashley's figures at the end of the day—Wade had inherited his mother's cleverness with mathematics—while Ashley just sat in an intoxicated state, staring at nothing.

As Wade was putting on his britches, he remembered the letter he'd received the day before from Ella, his half-sister. He took it out and read it one more time.

"Dear Wade…

I don't know what is happening here. Aunt Suellen finally caught Mother and Uncle Will when she came home early from Jonesboro. You had told me about this, and I couldn't believe it—Uncle Will is a wonderful man, but he is old and has one leg!

Aunt Suellen had a screaming fight with Mother. She said something about Mother taking her first love and now trying to steal her husband! Mother said something like, "Fiddle-dee-dee, I don't want to marry him, you goose." But of course Aunt Suellen was heartbroken, and Uncle Will has gone over to the Fontaine's farm to spend a few days.

Tony Fontaine has just returned from his long trip after the unpleasant business with Mr. Hilton back in '69; it doesn't look as if anything will be done to Tony now. We have a new mayor after all!

So Mother has refused to leave Tara, and so I am staying as well. I really hope Mother will stay away from Will Benteen after this. It's not Aunt Suellen's fault that Mother has to always get what she wants.

Possibly I will be helping Hetty Tarleton teach, they say I don't need a certificate. I hope the little monsters aren't as bad as we were as children!

Best,

Ella."

Wade folded the letter, putting it away, and tapped Hugh's arm, kissing him on the ear, and whispering "I'm going now." Wade went to the window.

But Hugh called faintly from the bed, "Hey, I love you, you know."

Wade shushed him, smiling. "Don't talk nonsense, Hugh." For God's sake we're men. It's just a little horseplay we do, not like the feeling between man and wife. Wade was sure that he would become interested in young girls soon, and many of them were quite friendly, and sometimes a bit forward with him.

Nanette Picard, Hugh's niece, was always waving and smiling at Wade, and Wade knew several of his boyhood friends were quite smitten with Nan's dark hair and mischievous green eyes.

But Wade was still having fun, just fooling about with boys. There were lots here in Atlanta, Hugh was by no means Wade's favorite. Even at Tara, where Wade had discovered that Big Sam, the darky foreman, had never "jumped the broom" for good reason.

Before Archie, the Wilkes' one-eyed driver had been killed in a barroom fight, he'd taught Wade tricks that he'd learned during his forty years in the Fayetteville prison. "Tain't that I'm queer." Archie had said "Just so much more you can do with a boy."

Wade also remembered his music teacher, Mr. Foote, at the academy had actually proposed leaving his wife and taking Wade to France after graduation. "People would understand us there."

Could you imagine that?

Hugh Elsing was a bit clinging, and needed Wade too much, and Wade hoped that didn't mean he'd have to stop playing around with Hugh. Still, Wade walked over to the bed and gave Hugh another kiss. Hugh looked like a bunny under the sheets!

"What were you reading?" Hugh asked urgently. "Did that baker's apprentice write you another poem?"

Wade smiled and waved good bye. He didn't have time to explain Ella's letter, and would have been drawn and quartered before he'd let Hugh know about Mother's nonsense with Will Benteen. It was like the nonsense with Hugh, just playtime.

Climbing out on the trellis, Wade surveyed the street, but it was five a.m., and quite deserted. Sometimes when Wade left Hugh's of a morning, Grandpa Merriweather would be going by in his bakery wagon on early deliveries, but not today, thank goodness.

Last year, shortly before Mammy's stroke, the old darky had reminded Wade of how little Bonnie had once talked him and Ella into stealing a pie from Grandpa's wagon, and they'd been thrashed for it mercilessly. But Bonnie, of course had been untouched, and eaten most of the pie, anyway. Baby Bonnie had been a lively one!

Wade climbed down the ivy, dropping lightly to the ground. God forbid that old biddy Mrs. Elsing looked out the front window, or one or two of the Gallagher children. After the killing of Fanny's husband, Fanny had returned to the Elsing home to live.

Wade had been horrified to learn from Hugh that Fanny was seeing Agamemnon Link a former Yankee corporal. But Wade knew he couldn't judge anyone, as long as Fanny didn't marry the bastard.

Just as Wade crossed Peachtree Street, he heard a call. "Hey there, cousin. Getting in a bit early, ain't we?"

Wade turned and saw Beauregard Emory Wilkes leaning against a fence with his trusty stick. Beau had begun going blind when he was eight, right after his mother had died in childbirth. Now, in his seventeenth year, Beau had quite adjusted to it. A sighted person wouldn't have noticed Wade in the early gloom.

"I heard your door key clanging against your lucky bullet, or whatever that thing is that your father left you." Beau explained, as Wade walked up to him. "How's Hugh Elsing?"

Wade breathed hotly. "Beau…"

Beau leaned forward, his eyes obscured behind little black shaded spectacles "Or was it Hugh at all? Lots of deviates here. Maybe it was Fernald Dill over on Elouise Street, or one of the hoboes in Grant Park. Get blown for a quarter, Wade?"

"Beau, it's none of your damn business where I was, and do you have to talk so loudly?"

Beau reached out a groping hand, and found Wade's shoulder. "Wadie, I don't care that you're a poofter, but someone else might, and fairies don't do well in Atlanta. You could get hurt, and cause a great deal of shame for your mother and my father, and perhaps cost them business at the Kennedy Mercantile, if not the mills."

Wade looked at his boots. Beau was right, of course. Beau had covered for Wade more than once during Wade's period with Judge Adams—the Judge, long married had had to meet Wade in the Wilkes cellar. It had been fairly easy as Ashley, Beau's father had little interest in whether his nephew was staying the night (or in what room) but now Wade was becoming a man, and this had to stop.

"It's just a temporary thing, I know you tell me." Beau said, as he let go of Wade's shoulder. "The Greeks did this, and all, but Hilda Dudley came by yesterday looking for you, she wanted to go riding, and why waste your time with an idiot like Elsing? Wade you are a grown man now—nineteen years old. You decided not to go to the university, and you're doing quite well in managing the sawmill. You really should look for a wife."

Beau grinned. "I can stay a bachelor. Who'd want me?" Beau tapped his dark spectacles.

Wade assented, and then looked suspiciously at his cousin. "What're you doing wandering around by yourself at near-dawn, Blinky?"

Beau snorted. "Well, as you know, I like my trips to Mrs. Watlings house. You've lent me money often enough. Seeing as which I shouldn't throw the first stone at your glass house. Father's allowance only covers one trip a month or maybe two, so I found a friend who contributed a dollar for my fun with one of Belle's ladies, and I was just resting up after my evening."

Wade laughed. "And you have the effrontery to tell me not to carouse of a night! The blind leading the—"

"The sodomite—" Beau said, and both boys laughed self consciously.

"You really should visit with me sometime" Beau said archly "Miss Violet would get you interested in girls really fast."

"Who was it that sported you a buck for her favors?" Wade asked once more.

"Beau didn't have to pay. I have considerable credit at Mrs. Watling's establishment" came a deep voice from behind Wade.

Wade spun around and there was Rhett Butler, his stepfather, and another man, rather pale looking in his mid thirties.

"Jesse, you met Beau earlier, and this is my wife's oldest son, Wade. Wade, this is Jesse ah…Jackson."

Wade hugged Rhett and shook hands with the pale man. He'd not seen his stepfather in almost a year. Rhett did not live with Scarlett anymore at the house on Peachtree Street, although they were still lawfully married.

Rhett stayed at the Watling house, and clearly, he had quite a bit of pull there. Beau could probably visit a girl every night of the year, if Rhett willed it.

"Of course, you must've had a time of it!" Wade said, looking back at Beau and grinning. "I've not been to Mrs. Watling's but I understand it's quite a place for young gentlemen to sow their wild oats."

Jesse Jackson smiled. "As a farmer's son, I wish I'd done my reaping and sowing in cathouses rather than on my father's farm, but I'm actually quite happily married. I just sat in the parlor with Butler here while young Beau enjoyed himself upstairs."

Wade looked earnestly into Rhett's face. "Are you home for a while, Uncle Rhett? It's a silly question, but Atlanta isn't the same when you're out of town."

Rhett grimaced. "Well you know, I don't drop by the house anymore, though I paid dearly for it. But—Wade I've found a new business interest. Since Atlanta and most of Fulton County has passed a dry law, I might be staying a while, since there's a fellow in town who wants to try a non-intoxicating product, sort of a clean version of coca wine. Do you know John Pemberton, who runs the apothecary shop—the druggist?"

"Beau, Ella and I have had quite a few strawberry phosphates at their counter" Wade said, leaning next to Beau on the fence.

"Well, Pemberton has formulated a tasty drink, made from the coca leaf itself. He wants to call it Coca-Cola, and thinks it might take off, distracting most of Atlanta from hankering after liquor."

Wade laughed, and Beau with him. Both had promised as children to stay temperate—Melanie Hamilton Wilkes had made them promise—and both had dismissed this promise as soon as they could get into the rum punch and moonshine sold in the back alley behind the Silver Dollar saloon.

"You're right, boys. " Rhett said, smiling. "This Coca-Cola isn't going to replace hooch, or forty-rod, or even claret. Not even for me. We'll always have it at Belle's. There will always be a place for spirits. But the coca leaf, which is imported from—"

"Peru" finished Beau, always the know it all.

"Yes, that's right. It's quite a stimulant, this coca leaf. Peruvians make tea from it, and chew it for fun. Quite stimulating, like laudanum."

Wade thought about this. Dr. Meade prescribed laudanum for pain and also for a few bored old ladies.

"What is your business, Mr. Jackson" asked Beau of the pale man.

"Well, Mr. Wilkes, I guess you could say I move money around…redistribute it, you know." Mr. Jackson replied, and he and Rhett Butler exploded in a laughter that mystified the younger men.

Jackson tapped Rhett on the shoulder. "I've got to meet a train, friend. I'll see you soon."

For some reason the "train" remark also made Rhett smile broadly. "Well tell Cole Younger that I said hello. Hope to see you soon, Jesse."

"Yes, good luck on your business venture with this coca leaf thing, Butler."

"Thanks, but you won't blame me if I don't deposit my profits in any bank you plan to visit, Jesse."

Old men seem to laugh a lot for no particular reason, Wade and Beau thought, simultaneously.

Rhett took Wade aside a moment later. "I wanted to tell you that I saw you a few nights ago at the Candlelight Inn. You were chatting up Leith Albyrs. Be careful of that boy. Wade. He's a thief and the child of a notorious carpetbagger. The little swindler knows you have money."

Wade looked at Rhett, astonished. "What were you doing at the Candlelight Inn, Uncle Rhett? You're not an er, confirmed bachelor."

Rhett smiled widely. "Well, for one thing, a fairy tavern is one place I don't have to listen to the glories of the War Between the States. If I didn't know better, you'd think our side won with all the "General Lee" this and the "Stonewall that." But I have friends there that I've met through my brother.

Wade looked a little puzzled.

"My brother and a gentleman friend of his, own a share in the Candlelight Inn. Yes, that's right. Dorsey Butler, the good example, and my father's favorite son. Unlike my expulsion from West Point for general orneriness, Dorsey was dismissed for far more scatological reasons, and my father had to cover it up with much money. But enough of that. Stay away from Leith Albyrs. See any other young man you like, Wade."

Wade shook his head. "It's just a fun thing, Uncle Rhett. I'll choose my companions more carefully. I do like Leith though. But I'll try to begin keeping company with some girl, soon."

Wade rather liked Leith Albyrs, and hoped that Rhett's observations weren't too canny.

"It may not be a phase, Wade, and if it isn't, you can live the life you like, if you are careful. My brother has learned that."

"No, Uncle Rhett, I am a normal man, and I will meet a nice girl." Wade said stubbornly, hoping of course it wouldn't have to happen too soon.

Rhett smiled, and said nothing. He patted Wade on the shoulder.

"How is your mother? We don't see each other much but I hope she's doing well. The sawmill seems to be thriving." Rhett grimaced. He'd always resented this business venture of Scarlett's. Wade remembered how Rhett had encouraged Scarlett to call the mercantile the "Caveat Emptorium."

Wade was unsure of whether Rhett was aware of Scarlett's fling with Will Benteen. Wade had learned in his brief life that closed mouths seemed to suffer less, so he just said, "Mother's taking some time at Tara right now. The cotton is coming in, and so she's looking after that. Uncle Ashley is running the store here in town, and I'm helping a bit at one of the mills. We finally are employing free darkies again, instead of convicts, and fortunately, a few of the darkies are family men, and don't drink up their pay, and disappear for days."

Rhett smiled. "What you should do is only pay them every two weeks. That will weed out the slackers and the dipsomaniacs. Shiftless types will want to be paid daily if they can get away with it, and drink all they like."

Wade nodded. Rhett Butler had a head for business, for one who didn't work terribly hard himself. There was no doubt about this.

Rhett nodded his head towards the boy on the fence. "How's Beau?"

Wade shook his head sadly.

"It was a terribly blow to Beau when his eyes got so bad that he could no longer read. The Wilkeses are a scholarly people. Then, about three years ago it all went black for Beau. Beau is quite independent, and gets around town quite well on that stick of his, but he refused to go to a college for the blind, even though Mother has offered to pay for it. I think Beau doesn't want to leave his pa, who is having a problem with drink, as you know."

Wade was vaguely aware that Rhett and Uncle Ashley had never really gotten along, and expected a smart remark about the drinking, but Rhett said nothing.

"Beau's Aunt India—she's married to my Uncle Henry Hamilton now, they call him a cradle snatcher, though Aunt India's in her thirties—India has been able to get some of the raised dot books for the blind, invented by that Frenchman, Louis Braille. But Beau is resistant, he doesn't want to learn to use them. I read Beau penny dreadfuls now and then, and Uncle Ashley reads Beau Shakespeare—mainly the sonnets, at night before they go to bed."

"You mean before Ashley Wilkes passes out." Rhett said, smiling inimically. "Do you think Beau might be interested in travel? Perhaps I could take him along with me while I promote this Coca-Cola venture. He's a bright lad and although he can't see to write, perhaps I need a secretary."

"Well, if you entertain Beau the way you did last night during your travels, he might be quite pleased with the employment" Wade laughed. "Beau probably would love the adventure. I'm not sure if my uncle would be agreeable, however. Since losing Aunt Melly, he really is attached to his boy."

Rhett looked meditatively down the street and then back at Wade. "Your Aunt Melanie was a great lady. Perhaps the greatest I've ever known, though I was partial to poor Mammy, as well. Can she move at all since the stroke?"

Wade looked unhappy. "No, not really. Mammy's here, you know, not at Tara. She can blink her left eye and take food, but that's about it. Prissy looks after her."

And your sister Ella?"

Wade smiled. "Ella may teach school near Tara. She has no more than a primary education, but that's far beyond most of the people there. Ella loves books and can do mental arithmetic and orthography. The Tarleton girls have a good little schoolhouse, and it's become quite popular, serving all the white children in Jonesboro."

Rhett reflected. "Ella's just fifteen. Ah well, schoolmarming is better than what my sisters did at that age—giggling, gossiping, sewing hope chests. And the Tarleton girls were little more than that before they lost everything and now run a schoolhouse. We're building an interesting society, much like the one built after the fall of Rome."

Wade grinned. One thing Rhett and Ashley had in common was long windedness and pomposity. Of course things were different now—Wade could not remember when everyone was rich and slaves labored in the fields…but it must be quite a change to the old timers.

"You know, I wasn't the only one who predicted that we'd lose that ridiculous war. Or how it would affect our lovely society. The Yankees had all the weaponry, the ball bearing factories. And even after all this, the Yankees really had little interest in freeing the darkies. I think they just thought it would eliminate competition…they paid their workers almost nothing, and we paid absolutely nothing…and now we're even, I suppose." Rhett was silent. But then he said "Amazing things have happened though, in the fifteen years since the war ended."

Wade was a bit bored by all this old timer reminiscing. But it was indeed true. Wade remembered when he'd been just a sprat, eating nothing but mush and yams, because the Yankees had chased off the darkies and burned their resources.

When Wade had been nine or ten, the Yankees had been trying to interfere with the rebuilding of Atlanta, but in spite of it all, Mrs. Merriweather had started her bakery, Dr. Meade had built up his practice, and other businesses had thrived.

Now Wade Hamilton was a prosperous manager of a sawmill, and a graduate of a fine boy's school. He'd even had money to bribe the Milledgeville constable last month when Wade and Rector Dobbins had been caught in a compromising way.

"It's just going to get more interesting, Wade." Rhett said, smiling. "I can't promise you we'll all be rich, but we'll be a lot more energetic than our forebears. My father was a languid property owner, but his father was a pirate. After I was turned out of the house when I was little more than your age, I made my living taking rich boys money with the devil's pasteboards, and then gold hunting and then as a blockade runner during the war. But I had a damned good time, and I think you will, as well."

As Wade noticed the tight behind of a young mill hand trudging towards the Kennedy sawmill, he felt he had to agree.

.


	2. Chapter 2

TO MY READERS: I AM SORRY FOR REFERRING TO FANNY ELSING'S HUSBAND AS "TOMMY GALLAGHER" IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE "TOMMY WELLBURN."

Beauregard Wilkes sniffed the country air, and listened to the birds, as well as his cousin's conversation with Pork, the Tara darky.

"Mist' Wade, you and yo' cousin have shot up tall since you visited us befo'. An' Tara is comin' right along. Miss Suellen, she finally got Mist' Will to let her hire a cook, which is blessed, since cookin' ain't Miss Suellen's uh—"

Wade's laugh was narcotic; Beau covered his mouth, too.

"But what about Dilcey, your beautiful wife" Wade asked. "Doesn't she cook a great deal?"

"Dilcey take my skin off if she heard this, but Pixie Ruth makes the best chicken fricassee in the County. You'll see. Biscuits, too!"

The wagon stopped. "Mist' Beau need me to he'p him down, Mist' Wade?"

"No, he's fine, really." Wade said. "Sees more with his ears than we do with our eyes."

Beau hated, almost as much as his sightlessness, the way people just talked about him as if he were an infant of about three months old. When the candy butcher had came along in the train, he'd asked Wade "what the blind fella would like" and it had been humiliating.

As Beau climbed down from the wagon, he tapped around in front of him, feeling dirt. He heard his cousin's quick breath as Wade also alighted, and then Pork roused up the horses to take them to the stables.

Beau leaned his head aside. "So I know I was here and saw things when I was young, but in the last few visits, I've never really seen Tara, so to speak." Beau took Wade's elbow and they began walking towards the house.

"I've asked a number of people what Tara's like. Uncle Rhett describes it as a red mud pit, Scarlett calls it God's country, and my father goes onto a long history of the great plantations, interspersing it with tales of the death of the Roman Empire, and then tells me about his old place, Twelve Oaks."

Wade's voice snorted in response. "Well, Beau, old blind bean, what can I say. A plantation is like a very, very large farm. And this one has more than recaptured what I think Mother described it once was, getting bigger all the time. We have almost as many darkies working here now as we did when they were slaves, to hear Mother tell it."

"So Scarlett doesn't have to support Tara anymore with the money from the mills?"

"Not in some years. It's quite a nice plantation, I think. Oh, there's Suellen on the porch. I hope Mother's not in the house presently."

"Is that something to worry about? Oh yes, you mentioned Suellen's problems with Auntie Scarlett." Beau smiled. "How do the ladies exist in the house together, I wonder? This is going to be much more enchanting an entertainment than sitting around listening to Father read me "King Lear" while he's in his cups."

Beau heard Wade's breath go in. He shouldn't have mentioned Ashley, Wade was not pleased at all with Ashley Wilkes right now.

"Aunt Sue's waving at us, that's probably a good sign." Wade mumbled. "Not going to hang the son for the sins of the mother. Goodness. Suellen has gotten a bit—"

"What?" Beau asked with bated breath. "As the ladies say, do tell!" But his cousin was silent as he guided Beau a little closer to the house. "If you don't tell me, Wade I shall make loud guesses. Gotten a bit tall? Has she gotten slovenly? Hair fallen out? Pudgy?"

"Hushyourmouth" Wade said in one voice. "Yes, the latter. I'm afraid she was never a stunner, Auntie Suellen, but she's chubby, well more—"

"Buoyant? Large? How large? Is she spitting out Jonah?" Beau was enjoying himself, but he did keep his voice down. "Is she weighing down the porch—"

"Auntie Suellen, how are you?" Wade's voice was quite hearty, and Beau closed his mouth, biting the inside of his lip. Funny, Beau had always thought the epicene fairies and poofs were gossipy, and Wade, for a homosexual, certainly behaved like the ultimate masculine gentleman. He may make a husband yet, Beau considered.

Suddenly, Fat Aunt Suellen was giving Beau a wet kiss on the cheek.

Beau heard the door open, and a small boy's voice. "Mama! I want another tart, Mama. Why that man's wearing black glasses?"

"Billy, why don't you go back inside." Suellen bustled against Beau and indeed she was quite hefty. Beau hoped she would not knock him over.

"Can I hold his stick?" Beau felt small hands dragging the stick away from him, but Beau held on tight. His stick, cut from a lilac bush and polished by Uncle Peter, was his security.

Beau heard a whack, and crying and the little boy ran screaming.

"Wade, you don't have to hit my baby boy. He's just interested." Suellen was indignant, but then she seemed to be recovering. "Why Beau, you look wonderful, and I understand you get around so well with your little stick there that Billy liked!"

"Oh yes." Beau said, trying to smile. "It's just that my stick is very important and I can't have children toying with it."

"I just remember when you were about thirteen and bawling your face off about going blind, and you just handle it so well now!"

Beau bit his lower lip.

Wade's voice came, annoyed. "Beau's fine, and we're so glad to be here. Uh, Suellen. I'll say sorry to Billy later, I brought him a jackknife, I'm sure he'll forgive me."

Beau heard the door open, and Suellen was gaily inviting them into the parlor.

"Grandma Fontaine is here, yes, ninety-three years young, and so is Alex, Beau. You remember Beau and Wade, of course? They're going to have a big pow-wow with my Will about trading seeds or something, and Grandma, don't Wade and Beau look like handsome young men? Beau's afflicted, of course, but he's still quite a fellow. I think if he became one of those blind beggars, the girls would just shower him with pennies!"

Wade silently led Beau over to a chair and tapped his shoulder, and Beau sat down.

"My God it's like magic." Suellen marveled. "Look how clever Beau is. He knew where the chair is, it's like he's a genuine psychotic."

"I think you mean psychic, Suellen" Alex said, but Beau could hear the smile in his voice. Oh Father, why have you gotten me into this? But Ashley had begged Beau to go with Wade to Tara and explain "the other side" of the story.

Wade was still silent, and Beau tried to be social. "I'm so glad to be here, Mrs. Fontaine, and of course Alex. I've not seen you since my last visit—"

"Or seen anything" Suellen put in helpfully.

"The weather feels wonderful here as opposed to the crowded city."

"I understand Atlanta's really doing well—new hospitals, lots of business coming in. We hope to come to the International Cotton Exposition." Alex's voice was a bit strained, Beau thought. Maybe he's afraid Grandma Fontaine will say something inappropriate. Beau had heard the old woman did that.

Wade piped up. "Yes, the turpentine growth has made for lots of money coming in, and Mother is thinking of expanding into paper mills. and you've heard about kaolinite. We're building a lot of brick buildings in Atlanta now."

Suellen became bored and bustled off to the pantry, and Beau sat still, digesting the experience of Susan Elinor O'Hara Benteen as Wade continued the small talk with the Fontaines.

Beau knew it was selfish to worry about a spiteful, gossipy idiot like Suellen. He and Wade were here on a sort of mission. Wade had discovered that in addition to Ashley Wilkes's imbibing, he'd been keeping company with a rather expensive young woman over by Inman Park.

After Wade had discovered the doctored bills of lading, he'd told Beau that Scarlett would have to be informed. Before Wade could send a wire, Beau convinced him to let them make a personal trip. Certainly Wade had the right to call the sheriff about Ashley's embezzlement, but Wade agreed that Beau could come and present some sort of alternative plan for his father.

What sort of plan? Beau had no idea. Not even eighteen years old, Beau had little imagination of how to get the dream like Ashley out of this terrible mess. Perhaps his father could be demoted to wagon driver, and pay everything back gradually, but it had been nearly a thousand dollars missing!

Had Father changed because of being locked up in the Yankee prison? Perhaps. Ashley had always been, unfailingly, a gentleman, and he'd instructed his son to be the same, but now he was just a wine sodden embezzler.

Beau didn't know what to do. He'd had to raise himself, practically, since Melanie's death, and he'd dealt with his father's foibles for a good decade now. This hadn't been the first young woman to help his father distract himself from the new realities.

Sadly, Beau's blindness had helped rein Ashley in a bit, as the elder Wilkes had tried to go through the fiction of looking after his sightless son, while Beauregard could actually look after Ashley.

Why couldn't Father just go to Mrs. Watling's house to enjoy the inexpensive ladies? Beau had been doing this since his fourteenth year. But Ashley wanted the fantasy of love, he'd been dutiful so long. Beau was vaguely aware that Ashley had been pressured by his family to marry Melanie, so many years ago. Now Ashley was breaking out, at nearly fifty years old.

As Wade and Alex talked about peas, or something, there was a heavy shuffle of feet, and Beau smelled Grandma Fontaine, who perhaps should have changed her bloomers this morning, or this month at least.

"You must forgive Suellen, Beau. I never thought I could accuse a lady of boorishness, but our Mrs. Benteen is quite the exception."

"If she's a lady at all." Beau said, but then he covered his mouth. "Excuse me, Mrs. Fontaine, that was uncalled for, and I think Suellen is going through a difficult spot just now."

"Yes, the county is well aware of that! Your Aunt Scarlett is the Becky Sharp of the South." The old lady laughed, and Beau was distressed that he could detect every ingredient of her breakfast on her breath. However, Grandma Fontaine was a stroll in the park as compared to their hostess.

Suddenly, Grandma Fontaine reached out and grabbed Beau's arm, clumsily. "I'm going to go on a walk, why don't you come along. You don't need tea right now."

Before Beau could respond, the old lady yanked him out of the armchair and began pulling him toward the vestibule, Beau barely having time to grab his stick.

"Grandma Fontaine, where are you going, precious?" Suellen's honeyed tone catcalled after them. "Doesn't little Beau want some tea?"

"I loathe that woman, and Suellen told me once that Scarlett lied to Frank Kennedy, telling her that Suellen was engaged to my Tony, in order to marry Frank herself. As if Tony would look twice at Suellen!"

Before Beau knew it, they were on the front porch, and he felt a bit dizzy. Beau preferred to be guided around by people who walked slowly and let him take THEIR arm, but Grandma Fontaine had not been coached in socialization with the sightless, apparently.

Beau's feet felt grass, and the old lady finally slowed her trot to a canter, and then a walk.

"It's starting to get better here. They've hired some clean living darkies as field hands, and the work seems to be getting along, as well as on our place, not really a plantation anymore, but certainly Alex has learned the agricultural ropes. We will be having a fairly respectable product this year."

As they walked along, Beau smelled curing ham.

"Nice scent, isn't it? They rebuilt the smokehouse here—Will's an ingenious craftsman. We've had some fine meals over at Mimosa as well—I was unaware of how many wild hogs were traveling through the woods, but since Tony's been back, he's shot quite a few…tasty! Yes, Tony and Alex are making me proud. Tony was an idiot to kill that fool,

Jonas Wilkerson. But you've got to admire his spunk."

Beau let the old lady run on, wondering if Wade had seen Scarlett yet, and apprised him of Father's thefts. Grandma Fontaine bumped heavily into Wade as they walked. God old women smell bad. The smokehouse helped a bit, though.

"Tara doesn't have a good granary yet. You've got to catch up on that, or rather Will does. It's marvelous watching all the rebuilding of our so-called empire over the past decade. My father lost all of his money, in Alabama…and then his friend Samuel Mims…"

Beau poked his stick around as the old lady bustled him along, her fingers alternately grazing his arm, and then gripping it as if she were wielding a pick axe. Beau began to truly appreciate the genteel nature of Pittypat Hamilton.

"You know, Beauregard, when the war began, the war that thrust us all into this folderol, many here in the County thought we'd win easily, that it would be a brief entertainment, killing off arrogant Yankees. Perhaps giving Mr. Lincoln a head-rub in the process! There was no idea of defeat, just glorious battle and the South seceding away from those nasal Northerners. I'm familiar with that sort of arrogance, it was the foolish arrogance in which I grew up as well, down in Mississippi Territory."

I'm not sure which moves faster, her feet or her mouth, Beau thought grimly, as he knocked little stones out of their way with his stick.

"Yes, I still remember it, when I was just your age, eighteen or so. A number of fools, including a young idiot I was engaged to, Abner Blankenship took it in their heads to rob a Red Stick Indian supply train at Burnt Corn Creek. Very pleased with themselves. I remember Abner and his brother Daniel laughing about it the night before the raid. And Abner was slaughtered the next day, by the redskins, and Daniel's right arm was cut off, and most of the other boys, all friends, who thought they'd have an amusing and perhaps exhilarating afternoon, were killed in this half-baked fraternity stunt."

"Very much like this, a similar attitude came from my grandsons when they were getting drunk and playing at soldiering just before the War. During their er, rehearsals, Tony shot one of the Tarleton boys in the leg. Such nonsense. But they thought the war would be just another lark they did…reminded me of Abner Blankenship when they talked about it, though fool that I was, I thought the South would win after Fort Sumter."

Beau wondered if they should get back to the house now. He was vaguely aware that there was mud on his new boots.

"And a month after Burnt Creek, back in '13, the Creeks came, the savages, and slaughtered most of our settlement, destroying all of Samuel Mims's fort and killing my entire family, and I had to run off in the swamps for thirty miles! And I thought my life was over, you know. Saw my mother hatcheted right in front of me."

Suddenly Beau listened. "Your entire family, Mrs. Fontaine?"

"That's right, my laddie. All of them. So this recent war has been comparatively a tempest in a teapot, though I lost one grandson at Gettysburg, and another at Vicksburg. And my husband, God rest his soul, the doctor had to be stubborn and go and fight, but he came back a shell of a man…and then he died. No, Beauregard, this won't be the last war, men love wars…and have unlimited confidence in their warring abilities. And there is excitement in struggle. Your Aunt Scarlett, in her cuckoldry of her sister, is a bit bored, you know she struggled and fought to save Tara, and get some money, but the need if not gone, has abated a bit."

Beau hoped that Scarlett was not so fond of her money as to send Father to prison, certainly.

"Scarlett even shot a marauding—"

"Shot a Yankee, yes." Beau was getting bored again, but mercifully the old lady was pushing him back to the house. I have to be guided about by old women. Me, a seventeen year old man. I wonder if there's elderberry wine around, or something. I need some.

"Your own father held certain charms for Scarlett, I remember hearing all that gossip—and of course Scarlett married that scalawag Butler. They're alike in that they don't show their hand easily, Ashley and Captain Butler, and that possibly may be what fascinates Scarlett, what she perceives as adult masculinity. Unlike my mouthy intemperate boys or the excitable Tarletons, God rest their souls—and I think Will Benteen holds the same manly fascination for your Aunt Scarlett."

Beau shook his head vehemently. "Scarlett loved my mother, and my father was really like a brother to her, and she a sister to him. I've heard all that nonsense. But Scarlett and my father would never have compromised—"

Grandma Fontaine chortled. "I think young folk expect their elders to be almost perfect people, saints, and when they're let down it's such a shock. Scarlett may have learned to value poor Melanie's friendship, but I think there was a testing period. I saw how Scarlett danced with Ashley, pressing indecently close at balls before the war, after he returned from his five year tour of Europe, nonsense that such a venture was. But truthfully, as much use as Ashley Wilkes has been here, he might as well have stayed in Europe."

Grandma paused, and then said, "Not only was Ashley Wilkes about as much use as a free issue nigger here at Tara, but my daughter-in-law Sally writes to a former Fayetteville Academy chum, who is married to one of the bookkeepers at the sawmill, and she says your father—"

Beau pulled his arm away from Grandma Fontaine roughly. His stick was touching the reassuring wood of the steps, and Beau said briefly, "I am not at liberty to speak unpleasant words to a lady, especially one of your years, but I think we've had enough of this offensive conversation."

As Beau haughtily tapped his way up the steps, he heard the old lady laughing raucously.


	3. Chapter 3

Will finished strapping on his wooden leg and then picked up his breeches, looking down fondly at the slumbering Scarlett O'Hara. He shook his head. What am I going to do? I have to stop this nonsense. The past fifteen years have been damned good to me, better than I deserve, really.

Will had initially refurbished this former slave hut on the edge of Tara, hoping to hire some darkies who wanted to stay on full time—Big Sam had his own hut about half an acre off. But quite often Will had used this shed for his little dalliances with various ladies, married or otherwise, of Clayton County…and now he'd been caught.

Shame, really, Will really hoped things weren't at an end. He had a nice little bed in here, and a stove, and sometimes when there wasn't much to do; he'd come here and read a paperback "Penny Dreadful" novel. And then other times, of course, he had company.

But now Suellen, Will's wife of fifteen years was very upset, and when Sue was annoyed, she ate, and she screamed. Will didn't mind the eating, he'd never been all that physically enthralled with Sue to begin with, but all the hullabaloo he could do without.

Unfortunately, at one point, Suellen had told Will that she would find her own dalliance, and suggested that Tony Fontaine would be a suitable candidate, which had unfortunately made Will laugh a bit. That had made Sue even angrier, and Will was trying to stay out of her way, now. If only he could stay away from her sister, as well!

But, as in a lot of cases, Suellen didn't blame Will, just Scarlett. Scarlett had snatched Sue's first fiancée and then Prissy, the eternal gossip had reported that Scarlett had suggested to Will that he marry Careen, as she was worth "two of Suellen".

Will had been with many women, but he'd never been a husband up until now. Usually when trouble came, he was departing out the back, and he couldn't leave now, he lived here.

Will Benteen had had an interesting life. He didn't talk too much about it, or anything. After he'd been dropped off to Tara by another Reb, and then nursed to good health, he'd done his best to work around the plantation, and he'd done laboring work on a number of farms, just for cash to wander, and he was at home agriculturally.

Will could plant, and hoe, and steal the odd chicken, and he'd gotten the plantation back on its feet, and it was his home, he felt, and everyone wanted him to stay.

And finally, since he really had nothing to go back to, he'd married Suellen. The ladies of Tara had assumed that Will's family was dead, or something, but in truth he had no family.

But Will had the ophthalmologic disorder known as the "wandering eye" and had made female friends throughout the County, Jonesboro barmaids, darky girls, Sally Fontaine, Cathleen Calvert, as well as having bedded three of the four Tarleton sisters, and he doubted any of them knew he'd been with any of the others!

Of course everyone knew Will had been with Scarlett, because Suellen could not shut her mouth…and peculiarly, this had made Will even more attractive to girls in the area.

Yes, Will had had these problems before! Will had been taken out of a Richmond orphanage along with three other boys, by an Abolitionist farmer called Levison.

Levison had told the boys that he didn't believe in slavery, and would teach them the "trade" of farming, and had nearly worked Will to death, with a whip in one hand and a Bible in the other…but it didn't weigh on his conscience, this Levison, for after all, the boys weren't slaves.

Will had hastily departed Levison's place three years later after 13 year old Sally Levison had told her Pa that she was with child, and she believed she knew the responsible party…though it could have been any of the orphan boys, really.

After a sojourn with a traveling medicine man, Will had joined Clive's Circus, and had spent a decade putting up tents and leading elephants about, but then he'd had another messy involvement with one of the acrobats, a young lady insistent on Will's hand in marriage, even after she discovered the ringmaster's niece also had matrimonial plans for young Benteen. Again, he departed.

It mystified Will how he got into these peculiar situations. He was small and a not particularly attractive man, but he'd discovered that women were fascinated by men who had little to say, and truly, Will didn't think more than one thought at a time. When he was chewing tobacco and sitting there, women thought he was listening considerately.

Will met more women and had a variety of careers including shoe clerk, mercantile hand, feed store worker, deputy sheriff, and lots more farming as he traveled around, making enjoyable errors (as long as he stayed alive) with the various housewives of the South.

Will had, in his time as farm hand and overseer in different fields, met happy and unhappy darkies. He'd met well treated slaves, and black men who owned OTHER black men. He'd read Harriet Beecher Stowe's ridiculous hyperbolic novel, and wondered at what Yankees thought about the treatment of Negroes. If any master was like Simon Legree, their slaves would be not fit to work, they'd be lying around bleeding!

When Will discovered the events of April '61 at Fort Sumter, he joined the Confederates immediately. Even after losing a leg, he'd stayed on with his regiment until, in a near coma; he'd been dropped off at Tara.

After Will had married Suellen, he was still rather quieted down by the war, and tried to be a dutiful husband, but he apparently was not done with his carousing. And tomcatting had not interfered with his marriage or his duties at Tara until Suellen had caught Will and Scarlett in the granary one afternoon, and now all this nonsense had started.

How had things started with Scarlett? Will had not pursued it, but they spent a long time talking about things…Scarlett came up once every few months to rest up, and even more after her problems with her husband, this Butler fellow.

They'd gone from talking about farming to talking about life; to not doing a lot of talking at all…Scarlett was quite an excitable woman. She'd told Will frankly after her first coupling that she really enjoyed this sort of thing, relations, so to speak, and wished it was as available to her as it was to men. Will had nothing to say to this, as to most things.

And they'd tried to break it off, even before Sue's discovery, but for five years it had been going on, and it was just one of those things. What amused Will was, Scarlett thought he was in love with her. He was a little bit in love with the quiet but enchanting widow, Sally Munro Fontaine, though he knew if her murderous little in-laws discovered the dalliance, Will would be swinging from a high tree!

But although Will was drawn to Scarlett, he knew it absolutely had to end.

Now Scarlett appeared to be awakening, and Will had overheard Grandma Fontaine and the blind nephew, Beau walking past earlier, and he hoped they'd take another road back to the house. Will was going to tell Scarlett that this was the last time, he was putting his pants on for the last time. And that he was going to be true to Suellen, though he'd never give up Randa or Hetty Tarleton, and certainly not the Widow Fontaine.

But he would be firm with Scarlett!

Katie Scarlett opened her eyes, thrust out her chest and stretched her arms. "I'm not quite ready to tie on my stays, come down with me here, just a little bit!"

Will tried to walk away, but the woman was a damned magnet!


	4. Chapter 4

When Scarlett got the news of Ashley's peccadilloes she was amused, perhaps more than she should have been. "He has an expensive mistress? That's not like the Ashley I know…God bless him, he's just after a little fun."

Perhaps she was thinking of all the guilt and misery that Ashley had gone through since the war. And of course, she'd known Ashley as a rich planter's son, a man of books and ideas, but not the most practical sort.

Wade had been raised among people who worked or did not eat, and he'd found all this talk of the way things were somewhat irritating. Some of Rhett's associates were Carpetbaggers, and they stole and swindled, and Aunt Pittypat's friends struggled to maintain businesses, or were doing carpentry or labor.

But Wade couldn't understand the dreamy thing. And normally, Scarlett couldn't either; his mother was always working to make money NOW. But there was a peculiar blind spot when it came to Ashley Wilkes.

"If there isn't a serious amount of cash missing, perhaps I can just have your Uncle Ashley just deal with the customers. He has such c harm."

He can't even do simple arithmetic without a pen and pad, Wade thought. And he's a THIEF! When Wade had thought Scarlett might hang Ashley, he'd been somewhat defensive of his uncle, but now he was worried his mother might have lost her fiduciary mind. Ashley Wilkes was a terrible businessman, even when honest, and Zebulon, one of the darky assistants, had had to take over more than once in the negotiations with lumber purchasers.

Mother no longer burned a torch for Ashley Wilkes, Wade knew how it had once been, but she seemed to view the former earl of Twelve Oaks as a sort of gamboling favorite child. There was nothing she'd rather do than relieve Ashley of his duties and let him play the flute or write poetry or some nonsense, but his pride demanded that he stay employed. And now his pride was ruinous for them all.

If it had been anyone else with their hands in the cashbox, Scarlett would have shot him herself. She'd worked mighty hard for her money, and now owned three sawmills, but she was in a good mood, or temporarily mad, and was enjoying her afternoons with Will Benteen. Still, someone had to watch the till.

"Good gracious, Wade, can't you spare someone else just to handle the actual financial transactions? Let your Uncle Ashley sell and keep him in the store maybe reading in the back or something. Zebulon and Aubrey Wellburn can watch him whilst they stock the shelves and such."

Wade felt his mother's eyes on him. Wade had grown up to be a handsome young man, now nearly twenty years old. Scarlett had been a mite disappointed when he told her he didn't want to go to the University, but he'd surprised Scarlett with his hard work.

Wade had begun working part time in the store in his mid teens and had taken over managing the store and the mills last year, when Scarlett was out of town, and she was amazed at his talent.

Scarlett wondered if Wade had found a nice girl yet. If he married someone from one of the better families around Five Points, families who were still slow to warm Mrs. Butler even a decade after the war had ended, it might accelerate more business.

Certainly Wade, as a son of the Hamilton family and charming in his own right was intriguing young ladies. Scarlett had seen this with her own eyes.

She hoped Wade wasn't pursuing chippies at the Girl of the Period saloon. She knew her blind nephew Beau tapped his way over there quite often, and had surprising results.

"Mother, at best, I think Uncle Ashley should perhaps just deliver lumber, " Wade said, smiling.

"Father could do sales—I think he's more to offer than just being a simple deliveryman." Beau said, annoyed. "He did go to Harvard."

"Beau, Uncle may have taken close to a thousand dollars." Wade said heatedly. "We can't afford another theft."

"Well, theft is a strong word, perhaps." Scarlett said. "I understand your uncle has been drinking a bit, Perhaps we can get the temptation of—what's the white trash woman's name? We can get her to leave town."

But, six weeks later, Scarlett had something more serious to worry about. Ashley and the "white trash" mistress had left town, and thanks to Wade's forgetting Ashley's name on a business account (there because of the half interest Scarlett had given Ashley in the mills some years before) had taken more than three thousand dollars, almost all their nest egg.

It had turned out that Ashley had been bleeding this account quite regularly for over a year, and while Wade had discovered the missing funds from the sawmills and the store relatively quickly, it had not occurred to him to check the major business account.

Unable to pay workers, and numerous mill hands, Scarlett found the sawmills deserted, during an especially productive time, when a major new hotel was being built. Just a small subsistence was coming in from the store, as they had no back up money to refill the inventory.

"No, no, I don't want to send the marshal after Ashley. He's like a lost or absentminded child, he really is." Scarlett said, but Wade was afraid his mother would have to sell at least one of the mills to make up for his uncle's skullduggery.

And when Wade went to the bank, to see about a quick mortgage, Mr. Gadsby, the bank manager, had shaken his head.

"What do you mean? We have money here!" Wade demanded. "You can't give us a small mortgage while we make up the loss?"

"Wade, if it were up to me, you know it wouldn't matter, son." Mr. Gadsby said with a smile. "The money from Mrs. Butler's sawmills and her store has helped quite a bit in building up the coffers of our bank, but Captain Butler has his own shares here, and unfortunately he is a major shareholder. In fact, he is one of the directors of First Atlanta Savings. He has forbidden us from lending any money to his wife."

Wade had gone to see Rhett over lunch at the Girl of the Period saloon. Gaping, he actually heard his stepfather say—

"I told your mother that I would lend her nothing after she broke her promise not to hire Ashley Wilkes at the mills ten years ago. If she'd used any money to support Ashley Wilkes at all, I'd loan her nothing else. And I would ensure no one else did."

Wade giggled hysterically. "No, it was a mistake. Uncle Rhett, this is a dire emergency."

"Yes, your mother's chickens have come home to roost." Rhett said complacently, as he winnowed a toothpick between molars. "It's unfortunate for her, and in a way it's certainly surprising. I never saw Ashley Wilkes as a cad, or a scoundrel, certainly not an embezzler. In a way, I rather respect him for it."

Wade was wild. What now? Mother seemed to be taking this whole thing a bit lightly for one who had struggled so hard to get hold of greenbacks back in the day, and Rhett had little interest in saving what was in effect, Wade's future.

Wade's early years had been spent on what was left of Tara after the Yankees had come and burned all but the house. Horrible meals of yams and little else, working in the fields, which Wade had begun doing at six or seven, and thinking his life would be that of a Cracker.

Wade had remembered his mother going to Atlanta, becoming involved in business. She'd married Frank Kennedy, an "old maid in britches" for the money to pay the back taxes on Tara, and then Mother had borrowed the money for the mills from Rhett Butler, and inherited Frank's store when he died.

Now Wade was watching Rhett Butler look quite pleased with himself. Wade knew that he had to do something but he just found himself staring at his stepfather, bug-eyed.

"I might consider lending you the money myself to get the books back in order if you and your mother made an honest effort to get the money Mr. Wilkes took."

"How would we do that?" Wade asked, incredulously.

"You have to go after him and prosecute him. I have a friend who is a bounty hunter. He used to ride around with my friend Mr. Jackson who you met. And now Boyd's a retriever of lost items, and lost people. I'll send Boyd to get your Uncle Ashley, if your mother gives her consent and she must sign a contract stipulating that she will prosecute Ashley Wilkes to the fullest extent of the law."

"She might not want to do that, Uncle Rhett."

"Well then, you will find yourself an impoverished young man, Wade."

Scarlett had been enraged when Wade came with Rhett's offer. More about Rhett getting one over on her than about fear for Ashley. For a time it seemed that she wrestled with which she wanted more—the business she'd worked so hard to maintain or her fondness for Ashley Wilkes, no longer a burning torch but—

Scarlett railed for a week over this, and then got a notice from yet another contractor that he would be taking his business elsewhere if she didn't have the manpower to provide him with some lumber. And so Scarlett capitulated, and Rhett gave her the money to hire more darkies.

But then of course, Rhett came to the house that he owned but no longer lived in, with a quiet stranger with sandy brown hair and quite a voluptuous moustache.

Wade crinkled his eyes at this fellow and realized he'd met him once before in a pansy bar in Macon. Strangely, the chap was also an old acquaintance of Mother.

"Boyd Tarleton, as I live and breathe." Scarlett's mouth dropped open. "Even hiding behind that gorgeous moustache, I remember you."

Boyd Tarleton smiled. "That's right, Scarlett O'Hara. You were the girl my twin brothers were besotted with, and Tom, too, for a bit. Just head over heels, every man in Clayton County…and my sisters couldn't stand you, they were so jealous!"

"We all thought you were dead, Boyd. Your mother told me that they never found your body. " Scarlett's eyes were wet as she kissed the long missing Boyd Tarleton. "She has a nice tombstone with your name, sharing it with your brother Tom, and the twins have the other one."

"I never really went back." Boyd said, smiling ruefully. "Well, once. I told my parents that I wasn't going to fight in the war anymore, after watching my three brothers and many childhood friends die, and then I left, and as I was dead to them, I assume they saved face by laying a tombstone. And I think also they were distressed by my confirmed bachelorhood." For some reason, Boyd Tarleton looked straight at Wade.

"And this is who is going to hunt down Ashley Wilkes?" Scarlett appealed to Rhett. "Boyd was the scholastic one of the Tarletons. He was going to be a lawyer—"

"I was the runt of the litter, that's right, only five foot ten." Boyd said, grinning under the big moustache. Wade had not thought of Boyd as being small, although he did think the man looked damned good.

Tarleton reminded Wade of Endicott Drury, a long time lover, who was the father of several of Wade and Beau's childhood friends. Married twenty-six years to a former Atlanta belle. You'd never know he was a fairy, Endicott, total maleness. And this was true of Boyd Tarleton as well.

"And-And Ashley was one of your good friends." Scarlett said, wondering. "How could you hunt him down. You all almost went on your Grand Tour together, only the twins kept getting you kicked out of school so you couldn't graduate and go to Europe."

"That's right, Ashley and I were bookworms, but I've learned a few things since wandering away from the War Between the States. I'm good with a pistol, and I am fond of money, and will do what it takes to get as much as possible. Rhett here tells me you are much in the same way about the latter."

Scarlett looked confused, but she finally signed Rhett's contract, biting her tongue. Boyd and Wade stepped outside for a moment, and Wade wondered for a moment if Boyd Tarleton recalled where they'd met, but just a little time later, Boyd pulled Wade into the carriage house for a pleasant half hour, and that worry was put to rest.

As they dressed afterwards, Wade asked Boyd why he didn't try to mend fences with his parents. "After all, they could really use some help at Fairhill. Your mother has more horses which makes her happy, but your father has only a couple of darky helpers, and they speak of you all—the boys—whenever I've visited, though I don't know them well."

Boyd smiled lazily at Wade as he leaned against the door of the carriage house. "You know, I always felt a bit different from the rest of the family—I read too much and was not that interested in horses or hunting. And of course I do have the Grecian love—the Oscar Wilde enthusiasm, as do you. They can't fathom that." Boyd paused. "My Grandpa said that most with our interest kill themselves, for honor. What balderdash!"

Wade shook his head. "It's just a temporary thing I'm going through, Boyd, fooling with men. An adolescent sport. I'm probably going to get married in a year or—"

"A year or ten, right?" Boyd Tarleton smiled. Wade was possessed by the man's long eyelashes.

Boyd laughed. "I remember making those promises to myself. Hope you work that one out, son. I was twenty-three when I deserted the war and I'm nearly twice that now. And I think if my parents knew as much about me as even you know…they do have a hint…they'd be much more unhappy than just tellin' people I've passed. "

As Boyd Tarleton walked back to the house, Wade called. "I hope you won't be too hard on Uncle Ashley when you catch him. The dime novels I've read about bounty hunters were a bit garish."

"Oh now, don't you worry, young 'un." Boyd Tarleton said, smiling. Captain Butler assured me he wanted Wilkes brought back alive. He said it would be far more entertaining."

Beau and Wade had never had a row. Certainly they'd thrown mud balls at each other as children, and tried, with pitiful effect to be amateur prizefighters. But after Beau lost his vision, it had been a more gentle friendship…they were closer than brothers, really. But then Beau learned that Wade had sent a bounty hunter to chase his father.

The argument had started in the back yard, and Wade had been stunned when his blind relative had punctuated one stinging remark with a haymaker across the jaw.

Wade had gotten up, hot with anger, and was about to lunge on his cousin. He knew he had to hold back, and reason with Beau.

"Damn it, Beau! Your father has nearly bankrupted us!"

The sightless boy swung on Wade again, moving towards the sound of his voice, but this time Wade was ready and he backed off, just slightly.

As Beau's arm swung into nothing, he gritted his teeth, humiliated.

"Father is temporarily unhinged, Wade. Rhett Butler, jealous over your mother's attentions, will have my father hung or killed in some worse way. Damn you, Wade Hamilton. Do you know who that lunatic Boyd Tarleton has been riding with all these years since he deserted. He's a bank robber with the Frank James gang. Robbing trains and banks with Jesse James and Cole Younger!"

Beau lunged at Wade, and Wade once more stepped aside, and when Beau got up, he felt around for his stick and began walking away, screaming back "You goddamned O'Haras care more about money than people! Aunt India told me this about you! And Rhett has always hated father! Sending a criminal like Tarleton after my poor—"

Wade had gone for a long walk.. What could Wade do? He couldn't in good conscience tell Beau that it wasn't his decision to prosecute, because in fact Wade had had to prod his mother towards saving her own business. It was like Ashley Wilkes had some magic hold over her, though it didn't seem like a romantic one any more.

"Ashley's such a sweet man."Scarlett told Wade one afternoon as they sat on the porch swing, after a day of inventory at the store. Scarlett was far more tender with Wade now than she had been when he was a boy. It seemed that Mother really preferred men to children…she'd been angrily bewildered with Wade as a toddler. But if she didn't like children, what had possessed her to marry in the first place?

And that she' d married his father to make Ashley jealous? Wade had gotten this bit of information from Aunt India when he was about fifteen, and it still mystified him. Mystified him even more than why his boyhood friends were so fascinated with young women…

"Your uncle was a brilliant, chivalrous man before the war, and even during the fighting, I understood he'd climb on a cannon to get the fellows riled up to fight." Scarlett said. "I find it hard to believe but Melly—losing your Aunt Melanie must have broken his innards."

To put it medically, Wade thought sarcastically. Wade of course had been ravaged with grief when Aunt Melanie had died in childbirth—he'd never had anyone who loved him as much…but you can't excuse stealing, damn it!

Wade had not thought he'd see Boyd Tarleton again, but one day the tall (at least in Wade's opinion) man came into the store. He looked a bit bewildered.

"I can't seem to get a bead on where your uncle could have gone. Normally embezzlers, especially drunken adulterous ones—"

Wade winced. In his heart, he realized he loved Uncle Ashley very much. Uncle Ashley had introduced him to Dickens, read him "Vanity Fair" and taught him and Boyd the mandolin.

But he tried to listen to Boyd Tarleton.

"I've followed up to Macon and other places where Wilkes relatives might be, or people he's known. Because of course he'll blow his cash and need more money."

Wade tried not to smile. "You know, Boyd, I doubt that Uncle Ashley and his paramour went to stay with relatives, at least Wilkes people. My uncle probably is quite ashamed of his behavior and wants to be as far away from family as possible."

Wade put down the sack of rice he was holding and propped himself up on the counter. Yes, Boyd Tarleton was a handsome man. Could they lock the doors of the store here? Perhaps not. Too many folk passing in the street. God knows, Wade didn't want to be hung for sodomy.

Boyd grinned, approving Wade's common sense. "You're absolutely right, but where does a man like that go? Of course he wouldn't want his old time relatives to see him…but he might be familiar with New Orleans, or Paris? He did a Grand Tour, I understand. Butler said he would finance me hunting Wilkes to the ends of the earth, even if it's more than the amount that was embezzled."

My God, Rhett was angry. Wade scratched his chin. Could Ashley have actually left the country? What lunacy. Wade knew they had to make a genuine effort to find this idiot, or Rhett Butler would be quite annoyed. And if the bankrolling of the store and mills ceased, things might go quite badly for Wade's future, financially.

Boyd leaned his rear on a barrel of sorghum. "I did find out that the woman's name—the slut—is Pamela Vavasour. She lived over to Buckhead area. Perhaps I could check over there, but you know, I'd like it if you could come with me, Wade."

Wade felt Tarleton's brilliant hazel eyes on him. Wade went to the back of the store, and alerted Aubrey Wellburn, the clerk that he'd have to watch the store. Wade wondered if Aubrey's mother, Fanny, and the rest of the Elsing-Wellburn clan was enjoying the embezzlement story a bit too much.

Riding their horses, Wade couldn't get over how well Boyd Tarleton rode, or how eternally bored he looked while riding. His Colt .45 was prominent on one hip, and he seemed to be daydreaming. It was as if Boyd was in no real hurry to wrangle Ashley Wilkes, for he knew it was inevitable.

Pamela Vavasour's house was a small clapboard affair, especially in the handsome Buckhead neighborhood. While Boyd Tarleton stayed on his mare, Wade went to knock. Inside he heard a man's harsh voice: "Chauncey! Ermengarde, get the damn door!"

Mildly shocked after knocking, Wade dropped his hand and then the door opened to reveal a jaundiced looking small girl, presumably Ermengarde.

"Yes, does Pamela Vavasour reside here?" Good God, I'm not Sherlock Holmes, Wade thought to himself, nettled.

"Mama? She went with Mister Wilkes. Do y'all know him?" the little girl asked. Wade realized she was older than she seemed, and probably was little because of early malnutrition.

"Uh, yes, Mr. Wilkes is my uncle" Wade said slowly.

"Pappy! The big thief's nephew is here. Are you goin' to shoot him?" The child turned to Wade confidentially. "Mister Wilkes took Mama an' our gold. I never seen nobody get kilt before."


	5. Chapter 5

George Ashley Wilkes was drunk. And he'd only left the Royal Suite in the Pasture Inn in Americus for an hour. Just to get a little grog and here he opened the door and Pamela was talking to a young man who was, indeed, lying on Ashley's bed, and Pamela was sitting by the interloper['s side, right there on the bed.

Oh, this was intolerable. Presumably, Ashley shouldn't have been surprised that his Pamela might be a bit flighty, a tad fast. He had in fact taken her from her husband, but how could she do it right here in their suite!

"Ashley" Pamela Vavasour smiled, bald faced right at him. He should slap her, but he was so grog-laden he could barely move past entering the suite door.

"This is Silas Watling. He is going to buy Baldwin's gold." Pamela smiled at twitched her adorable little nose, and of course the effect on Ashley was bewitching, narcotic. As it always was.

She reminded him so much of Scarlett. Scarlett had been so much fun.

Ashley had so wanted to have a good time. Most of his life, you know. He'd lusted shamelessly after Scarlett O'Hara, had courted her with devotion. But Father had sat down with Ashley and prevailed on him of the wisdom of marrying Melanie Hamilton.

"Ashley" Father had said with a quiet smile. "I had hoped you would sow your wild oats on your Grand Tour. If you want frolic in your bedroom, you can choose other bedrooms. We have unlimited credit in the little bawdy house in Jonesboro. But marriage is a sacred duty."

People outside the family were so impetuous. Look at India's courting with Stuart Tarleton…and how he'd lost interest one day, because he and his twin brother had become enamored of Scarlett O'Hara. India could have courted with some of the Wilkes Burr cousins, but of course she was nineteen now, in essence, all dried up.

"Melanie is a good woman, and you will enjoy her." John Wilkes had said to Ashley, who had tried not to sulk. "She is easy to talk with about the things we love…of course you must produce an heir, but besides that, it can be a happy and companionate marriage."

Yes, Ashley had married little, simpering Melanie. And he'd grown to love her, even though after the war came, there was no money or time to be chasing other women. Melanie was strong, and devoted…Ashley learned, as perhaps men do in arranged marriages everywhere, to love his small, dutiful wife.

But he'd never really enjoyed his time between the sheets with Melanie, and…knowing he couldn't have Scarlett, who would have, indeed wanted all of him, and had driven him mad.

Ashley should have taken it all so nobly. He should have crushed his lusts. His father was a great man. He had never re-married after Mother's death. Father had planned to free the darkies in his will. Ashley had been secretly horrified, the idea of giving up all that labor…but he was a selfish man, not like Father. He was one to shrink from duty.

He would never be like his father!

The war had come, the darkies had been emancipated, and Twelve Oaks, the Wilkes family plantation had been burned to the ground by the Yankees, who had seemed so civilized to Ashley during his Grand Tour, and certainly when he'd been an editor on the Harvard "Crimson".

Would things have been much easier had Scarlett O'Hara gone away after she'd taken Ashley's decision to marry Melanie with such poor grace? Certainly, but inexplicably, Scarlett had married Charles Hamilton, Melanie's brother and Ashley's cousin.

And then, after Ashley had come back to Tara, Scarlett had found a way to save Tara, and then, indeed to pull Ashley and Melanie to Atlanta so Ashley could be Scarlett's employee in the sawmills she'd so mysteriously acquired.

Twelve years after the war had ended, Ashley had met Pamela, and her n'er do well husband, Baldwin Vavasour, who was an ex-Yankee sergeant who had lots of gold and gems that he'd raided from respectable Southern homes.

Now that the Democrats were taking over, Baldwin Vavasour had been afraid to sell it all in a lump, and he'd been sending his wife and children out to peddle small pieces at pawnbrokers and other places…

Ashley had met Pamela one afternoon when she'd attempted to sell him a necklace for his "sweetheart" but after she'd discovered he was a lonely widower…

Now Ashley and Pamela had that scoundrel's gold, and good riddance!

Yet, Ashley knew he was disappointing Father's memory. He couldn't get his father out of his head to save his life. Ashley felt so anguished with what he'd become, a drunken thief. And even before he'd been a terrible manager of the sawmill…he'd lent money to darkies before their pay, and occasionally slept with their daughters….

And then he'd began drinking and stealing. Ashley had always dreamed of being majestic, like the heroes in Sir Walter Scott's novels. But Ashley was no Ivanhoe. All he was was a former plantation dandy, and now a grog drenched sot.

The young man reclining on Ashley Wilkes's bed looked up at Ashley insolently. "Wab w'ong id 'im?"

Ashley stared at the fellow. Was he an idiot? A Mongoloid? Talking with his mouth full? But no, the young man was quite handsome, dark curly hair and a chin like that Butler rapscallion. You see…Scarlett was taken from Ashley, and given to a worthless scoundrel like Butler.

Now Pamela looked sharply at him "What's wrong with you darling. Silas wants to know. He has a glottal stop; he can't speak correctly, although he is a divine dancer." She smiled at the garble mouthed boy, who winked. Ashley felt nauseous.

The afflicted boy leaned back on the pillow, and adjusted what Ashley perceived as an expensive cravat. 'Oo a fetchin' peez, Pummuh."

"He just said I'm a fetching piece, isn't he funny?" Pamela slapped the young man's leg as he lounged languorously on the pillow. "You tongue-tied tempter you, Silas Watling!"

Ashley wanted to strangle them both, but he was so possessed with Pamela's beauty. She was wearing a light pink crinoline dress and had a matching parasol beside her. Pamela was not really aware that a lady only carried a parasol in the hot sun, and certainly did not drag it about with her inside, like a four year old with a doll.

Pamela thought the umbrella was cute and carried one 365 days a year in different colors to match her dresses. (There had been quite an initial shopping spree when they'd reached Americus; Scarlett's available cash was in all the millineries now!)

Pamela had little to offer intellectually—she'd left school after three years in a country blab school, and occasionally took snuff and chewed plug tobacco. And she cursed with venom and alacrity.

But Ashley could forgive much in lovely, blonde Pamela Vavasour.

Pamela was vivacious and funny and knew how to please a man, especially late at night. Pamela reminded Ashley much of the whores and courtesans he'd met during his Grand Tour, especially those in Italy and France. When Ashley had read of Benjamin Franklin's romantic escapades in France, he'd wondered at the old man's lunacy in returning to the New World.

Why couldn't all women be like the Europeans? But Pamela was, and Ashley felt that Scarlett was also, though he'd never gone beyond kisses and caresses with Scarlett…the shame.

But of course Pamela's temptations came with a price. Pamela was a wild thing, and had actually spent nine months in a Mexican jail. She'd had two husbands in her twenty-six years, and countless other…"friends". Ashley always felt like he was on pins and needles with Pamela, who had once attempted to brain him with a brass spittoon.

Ashley hid the jewels and money just because he felt like he'd done all the real work of obtaining them. He'd broken into her murderous husband's safe to get the damn gold and gems…risking his life! And he'd spent most of their cash on her. All he'd wanted for himself was whiskey and grog…shame.

"Thow me duh jewry, Pummuh. I thee wha' I give 'oo." Now the young man sat up a bit, and Ashley was almost sure if he'd not returned to the suite so soon, the two would be engaged in—Oh, he couldn't think of it! Indeed he missed darling Melanie much now.

Melly was predictable, tractable, and always appreciative. Pamela was a force of nature, to be sure, as was this gabbling, hare-lipped counterpart.

"I can't show you the jewelry, Silas." Pamela smiled. "Ashley doesn't trust me with it."

"You once put sleeping potion in my coffee so I would lie immobile so you could go dancing at the Applewood Saloon!" Ashley thundered. "Why on earth would I trust you with more than a few shinplasters?"

"I know. You're afraid I'll run off with the money. Don't you know I love you, precious?" Pamela's eyes danced, and Ashley almost wet his pants.

When Pamela said this there seemed to be a wicked, mocking look in the baby blue eyes, but of course Ashley knew this was just her way—wasn't it?

"Pamela, I think we can look around a bit before choosing a buyer. Certainly Mr. Watling is one to consider, but don't you er—" Ashley was not managing this well. "We really should just relax, dear and you shouldn't be telling people that I have gold to sell."

"Why, are you the practical one? " Pamela asked, laughing. "I've been buying and selling stolen gems since I was fourteen, and watched my father and uncles do it before that. Ashley, you're a sweet man, but you should let me do the hard work."

But why? Ashley kept asking. Why did women just want him to…decorate the atmosphere?

"I hab' a munni now. I know lah 'bow dis" the young man said, as he boldly stroked Pamela's left arm.

Ashley wondered why he'd been stupid enough to check his pistol with the hotel clerk.

"Silas has the money now, Ashley, and he knows about the jewels, he should since he helped my imbecile husband take some of them." Pamela snickered. "I lied a bit to you about Arlen just stealing during the war…Arlen was a bit of a second story man just a few years ago, and Silas has been a bit of a help with that."

Pamela giggled at Ashley's shocked expression. "Silas and Ashley split the cash initially, and now Silas has the money to buy the rest of the share. He plans to melt down the gold and sell the diamonds and gems and rubies."

"Aa wah bui' a ho-house like mah mo'er has." Silas said proudly.

"Really? Your mother owns a whorehouse? And you want to build one too!" Pamela took this news with enchanting ennui. "Isn't that marvelous, Ashley?"

Ashley was ashen. He thought of the balls in Clayton County, and how well received he'd been when he'd returned from his Grand Tour. Shakily, Ashley sat down in a gilt chair near the door.

Silas Watling swung his feet off the bed and put his boots on. He looked straight at Ashley. "Oo won' ge' a beher wice in aw of Amehicuh."

"He says—"Pamela started.

"Yes." Ashley responded wearily. "I decipher. We won't get a better price in all of Americus. Certainly. But we might leave Americus to get a better price, you know, Pamela."

Somehow Pamela had talked Ashley into having a drink, and that had led to more drinks…and then they sang together "The Carpet Bagger's Lament"

"I've traveled this country all over,

And now to another must go,

Where the darkies are easier swindled,

And less of my lying do know.

I came from the cold frosty region,

The land of the ice and the snow,

I came with carpet-bag empty,

But now 'tis full as you know.

At home I was ragged and dirty,

And left when the sun had got low,

But soon made a rise in this country,

When I got in the Freedmen's Bureau.

I told how I shouldered my musket,

And fought for the poor old negro,

How I hated the secesh and rebels,

And told them to hate 'em also.

I swore them at night by dark lanterns,

In the league we call loyal you know,

And made them believe if they left it,

Straight down to the devil they'd go.

I promised that land we would give them,

Or acres quite forty or more,

With a mule fat and ready to tend it,

That caught the fool darkey be sure.

I promised to give them all office,

And make them my equals also,

I made them think I was an angel,

And this earth would be Heaven below.

We got every office we wanted,

And threw the poor darkeys a bone,

We robbed and we stole without fearing,

For Grant he would let us alone.

That "mournful fact" speech of old Greeley,

Struck the first heavy blow,

Now the niggers, confound 'em want office,

Then where shall we carpet-bags go?

I see that more trouble is coming,

The mule and the land I can't show,

So like many a swindler before me,

I must pack up my stealings and go."

By the time the "Lament was done, (and Silas, despite his defects, sang quite well) there was banging on the ceiling downstairs and they had a few more drinks, and then all three seemed to pass out…but of course Ashley, when he awakened, was alone. And astonishingly, the money was gone as well!

And indeed, the jewelry. And Ashley's pistol, from downstairs.

There was only an impudent note from Pamela, sitting on the top of Ashley's looted wallet. "You may be right that we'll get a better price somewhere else, and Silas and I are off to find it. You may as well go home, and let Arlen shoot you…you just aren't made for an outlaw, darling."

Ashley wandered downstairs, realizing he'd also foolishly been paying by the day here, and so really couldn't stay past the afternoon. Now he had NO money. When was the last time Ashley had no money? It was when he'd come home from the war, and walked seventy miles to Tara. And then Scarlett had taken care of him.

But there was no Scarlett to care for Ashley now. Not unless the woman had lost her mind. Ashley couldn't return to Atlanta, and all of his cousins in Macon and Burr were quite impoverished. Ashley had also relieved Aunt Pittypat and his sister India Wilkes of much of their coppers; and India was not a forgiving sort.

Ashley's sister Honey had married a one-armed Yankee, who'd taken her back up North. So there was no recourse there. Ashley didn't know to do very much.

He came outside onto a busy Americus street, and right across the road, incredibly, was a United States Army recruiting post. The Yankee Army. "All Ages under Sixty Welcome" the sign said. Ashley recalled the time with great pride that he'd refused an offer to be paroled from the Yankee prison camp to fight the Indians.

Honor was boring. Ashley was tired. He knew how to be a soldier, and of course the leaves promised drinking and whoring. What more could you ask for?

He walked up to the office and signed up as "Jefferson Davis Wilkes" he was repatriated to Rye, New York and the South never heard of George Ashley Wilkes again!


	6. Chapter 6

Doctor Klauder was excited to be the first of Sigmund's disciples to come to cure the ills and maladjustments of those in the American South. But he missed the reticence of the Europeans. Frustrating though it had been, their lack of self-centeredness had at least been a challenge.

"Doctor, do you think it's wrong for a woman to paint? Not that I would, or even needed to, but my best friend's granddaughter, she is using a bit of pot rouge, and I think lip rouge as well. I was thinking that perhaps I should draw a little skull on her door as a secret sort of come-down, don't you know."

Having to tease the personal information from a patient, indeed, he wished the client he was seeing this afternoon would go into a silent reverie, or indeed a coma…but she was much fonder of the soliloquy.

"Doctor, of all the Hamilton women, I think I may be the most ah self-effacing. India, my niece says I use the word too much because I read it in a novel, but don't you think I'm quite self-effacing? And I think I have a cleft chin. What do you think?"

Klauder had gone to hear the famous Harriet Tubman speak at Princeton University, and he'd been warned ahead of time that because of the elderly black's having been assaulted with the butt of a whip during her slave days, she occasionally passed out during one of her lectures.

"Uncle Peter, my coachman, is very upset because I had a gentleman caller last week and there was no chaperone. The fellow was selling some sort of shoe-brush, so it wasn't really naughty, but Uncle Peter is afraid I will become common like some of my friends who have taken in boarders to make money. I don't want to be common, Doctor—"

How dearly Klauder would have liked to have Miss Tubman as a client. The lady he had on his couch just now, Miss Sara Jane Hamilton, age seventy-two, would just not stop talking, and had no intentions of going into a brief nap.

"It's so different now that the nigras are freed, Doctor. The money we pay seems to spoil them. Give them too little they complain, if you give them too much, they seem to put on airs. Assassination is a terrible thing, but if it had to happen,I think Mister Lincoln should have been shot at the BEGINNIN' of the war, don't you?"

Perhaps a little Jungian meditation would be advisable. You shut your eyes, and your mouth, during meditation. But she seems to need no peace of mind, Mrs. Hamilton. Eighty cents a session is just not compensation—even two dollars would-

"I hate to get involved in other people's business, Doctor, but I think my friend down in Buckhead is involved with another friend's husband. Do you think I should leave a note in the other lady's mailbox, or just bring it up tactfully over one of my tea calls?"

Analysis was not always just a trial for the patient, Klauder reflected.

"I had so many beaux, Doctor. Male suitors, you know." Miss Hamilton said, looking up at the alienist from the couch. "But Papa didn't want me to just settle down with anyone, and I was terribly, terribly afraid also that if I accepted one proposal, the other boys might kill each other in a duel, or perhaps commit suicide, and we really couldn't have that."

The old lady giggled, immensely pleased with herself. "My beau Pennell Merriweather winked at me when I was a bridesmaid in his wedding to my dear friend Dolly. What can a girl do? I could tell there was pain in his eyes as well."

Klauder took a large sip of water. He had long dropped his little pad under the chair, and now was doing imaginary doodles of Otto Von Bismarck on his frock coat.

"Pennell wrote me love sonnets, I still remember one—

"In all the world I do not feign

My ad-mah-ra-shun for Miss Sarah Jane

She has no foibles, nor mis-rable faults

An' she's crackerjack at doin' a waltz!

Fo' a sugar-plum, she ain't so dumb, wish she'd drink

My Daddy's rum" But I apologize, Doctor, I can't remember the entire—"

"No no, dat ees more than enough for now!" Dr. Klauder hastily assured his patient.

"I was going to go to the conservatory in Marietta, to study spinet, but they said my fingers were too chubby for the keys, and Papa couldn't have made it without me staying within ten miles of him, don't you know."

Klauder looked out of the window. He was so grateful for the architecture of this office. The windows in Germany were so high, and without distraction he might commit homicide.

"I of course also retained my maidenhood to raise my niece and nephew, my dead brother's children, but even with this sense of duty, I could see the looks of agony and regret on the faces of many men who courted me…foolish boys."

In a sense, Klauder reflected, the American is less in search of answers, than just confirmation that all is well, that they are wonderful. You would think this would make the work easier, but I keep drinking more, alas.

"For a time, I thought of taking the veil, but do you know, nuns have to dress the same way every day?"

Perhaps I could keep just a very small amount of Madeira here at the office, not a great deal of course—

"I am so glad you encouraged me to tell you EVERYTHING about myself, Doctor Klauder, I don't have to hold anything back—"

"Vell, if you feel that you vish to keep some tings quiet, ah perhaps—"

"NO, I want you to hear it all!"

"Yes."

"Florence Lowther, she married one of my other nice boys, Ninian Elsing, who just had so much money. I heard Florence tell my best friend—well Florence is a dear friend too—that Ninny married Flo instead of me because I was heavy set, but I wasn't really. I was just Rubensque. Poor, jealous skinny Florence."

Miss Hamilton looked off dreamily, perhaps wishing she had a mirror. "Poor Florence, she had a rather homely daughter, called Florence as well, Fanny for short.

Fanny wouldn't court my nephew Charlie, he was so shy… I sent her an anonymous letter calling her Horse Face for that. But her mother- what a bitter, bitter person, though of course a good mother. I do love Florence Elsing."

"I must be honest, Doctor, it is true that I have gained some weight in my youth, but that is partially because when I was at the Tallulah Falls School I met this nice—though half Indian, I'm ashamed to say—stable groom, and we-we became close, and I got into a condition and had to go to Nice, in France, you know, to have a baby…"

It is no wonder she was concerned about being not chaperoned when in the office with me, Klauder thought. I keep hearing about this chaperoning but…

"And my Uncle Faribault, he'd been the victim of an awful accusation involving a ten year old boy, actually several ten year old boys, so Uncle Fair and I did our season in Europe together It was such fun, Uncle Fair knows so much about art, and all."

The old lady touched her face with a handkerchief, in which Klauder observed was a tiny decanter of brandy. She had apparently had this "cough" for a while. Shame the brandy didn't have more of a tranquilizing effect.

"They are so savage in the Old World, Doctor. No manners. Also, the other girls at the clinic really showed their situation much worse than I did, but Uncle Fair told me to keep a smile on my face and remember I was a Decatur Monson, and I've tried to."

Klauder was verging on confusion of Monson with Monsoon. Five dollars an hour would not…

"In Europe, I met so many nice men, but then we had to leave Nice because uncle met this shopkeeper's—he was an urchin, really—anyhow Uncle Fair went to Italy to look at some of the Carivaggio art and I came back home, without the baby of course."

Any child would perish with this sort of mother, Klauder mused. Could she stop talking long enough to give it the nipple?

" But after my condition, I began gaining weight…but it's always just made me more shapely, unlike so many scarecrow-ish women I've known."

Klauder looked at the suffering couch under the old lady's considerable weight, and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Grandfather had wanted him to be a surgeon, but Klauder had a weak stomach. The first time they'd dissected a rabbit in class, he'd dropped his lunch all over it, and that was the end of medical college.

"Actually, I weigh less now than I did then. It's a very personal thing, but my niece India says I should tell you everything. I think my bustle is drab now for a single lady, but I still show it a bit. What do you think, Doctor?"

Klauder perhaps should have not eaten the rice pudding for breakfast. He looked longingly at his spittoon.

"Papa always said I was light on my feet. He called me Pittypat, and now everyone does. Perhaps I should have tried to marry Ninian Elsing, but he was too shy to propose, even when I hinted coyly you know." The old lady paused and coughed into her handkerchief. "Boys sometimes never get the point."

Klauder had been sent Miss Hamilton because the old lady suffered from self-doubt and had low self-esteem…but if half of Germany had the confidence of this babbling shrew they never would have had to sign the Dreikaisersbund.

"Actually Ninian's brother and I became too close at one point, and I thought I was going to have a baby but I had scarlet fever and it went away. Boys are so silly, aren't they…but I liked Ninian, but perhaps Florence needed him more."

Klauder understood that Miss Hamilton had fainting spells, but this had not happened in the office as of yet. Could he frighten her somehow? Just for a moment or two. Her voice sounded like that of a wounded hummingbird.

" I would have hated to see poor Florence a spinster. Who else would have wanted her? Not to be spiteful of course she's my dearest friend. My niece India was a spinster for the longest time, and then she married my brother Henry about a year and a half ago, which was quite sudden. Henry is an awful man, and—"

The old lady caught her breath, and Klauder wondered whether she was going to be quiet for a moment. If he did not bill by the hour he would have quit the session now, if not committing seppuku.

"But India still has a key to my house and she's been meeting this awful man in my library every afternoon, and it's just terrible."

Vhat? Vhat did you say, Dummkopf—Miss Hamilton?"

"Oh, that Florence wouldn't have been a success as an old maid, she has these awful lines under her—"

"No, the other spinster. Vhat about—"

"There are many spinsters in Atlanta, Doctor Klauder. But few of them face life with the grace I possess—"

"No, your niece, Indiana—right? She spend time alone in a room vith a man?"

"No, India finally got married, thank God. No one thought she would, she doesn't have the rose in her cheeks of the Hamilton side of—"

"But about her dalliances vith the man who ees not her husband?"

"I shouldn't tell you this, it's rather private, you know." Miss Hamilton said, her double chin trembling as she looked over her shoulder from the couch.

"Mees Hamiltown, Ju haf told me about jur difficulties weeth your mudder in eh— giving up diaper to use outhouse training when ju were t'ree year—"

"No, when I was little I was trained—much too harshly—to use the facilities by my Mammy, Lulabelle. When Father found out Lulu actually hit me and made me smell my nappies, he threatened to sell her down the river, and I wish he had. But don't confuse my Mammy with my mother, of course. Mother wouldn't have stooped to even notice such degrading habits in childrearing as—"

"Jes- jour mudder—"

"No, my Mammy. You can't get my Mammy and my Mother confused, Dear God. My mother was Eunice Monson Hamilton, of the Decatur Monsons, as opposed to those awful Milledgeville Monsons, there's a story I could tell. My Mammy was the old darky who raised me.

Poor Mammy Lulu belle, she broke her neck falling…she first fell over a doll I left on the cellar stairs, and Mammy told Mama, and I got whupped, and so just for a joke my brother and I—he was so clever, I wouldn't have thought of it without him- tied a string across the stairs the next day, to see what Mammy would do, and she went right over, broke her neck, poor Mammy. I felt terrible, but Mother bought me a new dress for the funeral, and said I was the prettiest—"

"No, my point ees, ju haf told me all these secrets and confidences and now you balk at telling me dis interesting—revealing story about jour niece? Her behavior vith dis man could be ah—affecting your dream cycles."

Miss Hamilton's eyes widened then. She loved telling the doctor about her dreams.

"Oh, about India? Well, a lot has been going on. India's brother Ashley ran off with a trashy woman named Vavasour, and my grand nephew Wade and an awful gunslinger called Boyd something went to see the husband, Mister Vavasour, who tried to attack them, and Boyd shot this Vavasour right in the eye and killed him, and the magistrate said some very impertinent things to Wade…"

"But about India and her male visitor in your library. Were they—" pleaded the very, very bored Dr. Klauder.

"Yes, India and Captain Butler, who is also a sort of in-law of mine. He and India have been repairing to my library several times in the last few weeks, and I have been listening to the door…because there is a sort of couch in the library, more comfortable than this one and I'm afraid…"

"Jes? JES?" Klauder was almost frothing at his pad.

"Well, much of what they do is talk, Doctor. I learned that Captain Butler has a CHILD, an adult son who has a speech impediment, like you have."

"I do not haf a spich impediment. I spik perff-ect American." Klauder said heatedly. "Oy, I haf been mistaken for a native."

"I just meant he talks funny like you—"

"I spik like Wild Beel Heekok, I was trained—"

"Well, anyway, Captain Butler, who also had a child with my niece in law Scarlett, her name was Bonnie, the little girl—she died. Probably she also was traumatized by facilities training—"

"So there iss no luf-making in der liberry?" Dr. Klauder asked, in obvious disappointment.

"The first few times I just overheard—by mistake, as I dropped to tie my shoe—talking, as Captain Butler is interested in taking over the sawmills that his wife Scarlett had a recent financial loss on. He's been lending her money, and as she wants more cash, she's been giving him certificates of stock. "

Americans are so obsessed with money, Klauder thought dismally. For really, it is more important than lovemaking. If Stuttgart was not overwhelmed with psychoanalysts, Klauder would take the Queen Mary this afternoon.

"Captain Butler wants to buy up all the sawmills, and raze them, and start a bottling factory for the new soda beverage, Coca-Cola. I rather like Coca-Cola, Doctor. It gives me a sort of burst, you know."

A burst. She needs a burst. Gottinhimmel.

"My nephew Ashley brought me some morphia, he began taking it during the war for a leg wound, and I began feeling jittery, and Doctor Meade prescribed it, and then I was having Coca-Cola in the mornings to wake up, and a bit of morphia in the evenings to drowse off…

A shame he didn't have some morphia right here, Klauder thought. He could have patients sip it as they talked. They would feel cured almost instantly…or at least Klauder would feel somewhat cured, and he of course was beginning to think he needed analysis more than anyone in the wretched city of Atlanta.

"And then I wanted more sedative at noon, but Doctor Meade would only give me so much, and so my old darky Uncle Peter found a different doctor, who brought me more morphia, and a bit of laudanum….it's been quite peaceful, you know…"

"Vell you must not over-do it, Miss Hamilton."

"But with all the curious things that have been going on. Captain Butler is scheming, I think with India to take over Scarlett's sawmills, and you know, Scarlett sends me money each month, some of which I use for our sessions—"

Klauder suddenly felt more attentive.

"And then Captain Butler said the odd thing to India about being whipped, and I couldn't really—I had to take more morphia—"

"Vhat? Being whipped?" Klauder bent over and picked up his pad.

"It was very odd. Captain Butler told India that she reminded him of a governess he'd had as a boy, Miss Truncheon, who used to take down the captain's britches and WHIP him, and a little while later there was a din in the library like I just couldn't believe…"

After Miss Hamilton left, Klauder thought a bit about the sawmills that were owned by Scarlett Butler. He looked at his bankbook, and then hired a hack to visit Mrs. Butler personally.


	7. Chapter 7

After Phillippe Robillard had been killed in his saloon dispute with the Vaux brothers (aptly named Cleaver and Carver) he'd been somewhat dismayed to discover that instead of moving on to the pearly gates, he was haunting a gold buttonhook that Phillippe had given to sweet Ellen, his younger cousin on her twelfth birthday.

Phillippe's father, Raslan, had hung himself after cheating at cards, a debt of honor thing that Phillippe had never quite understood, and his mother, Sagesse, had been shot by her lover's wife…and Phillippe had grown up from early childhood around Ellen's house, and loved his little dark haired cousin. She was a joy.

They had grown up together, and had begun keeping company when Ellen entered her teens, and of course her father had been aware that Phillippe, along with a vile temper, was courting other ladies, "good" girls and bad girls alike.

It was not Ellen's fault that Phillippe had the impulse control of an intoxicated grasshopper. He hit jaws and kissed lips with just a moment's desire!

Ellen had been four years Phillippe's junior when her hot headed nineteen year old beau had departed Savannah at the family's behest. They'd been just terrified that he would elope with Ellen, who was terribly besotted with him, and of course Phillippe was not a nice stable burgher like so many in Savannah land.

In fact, although Phillippe had been quite fond of Ellen, it had been less of a romance on his part for Phillippe had been tempestuous in his dealings with girls as he was in barroom disputes, and of course, in the street.

But Phillippe had enjoyed Ellen's company, and had been horrified and a bit nauseous when he'd returned (in spirit) to Savannah to learn Ellen's revengeful plans for Uncle Jacques having sent Phillippe away.

But the truth be told, Uncle Jacques, Ellen's adoring papa, had asked Phillippe "If you have serious plans for settling down, my lad, perhaps I can take a more lenient view"

And Phillippe, horrified by the evil phrase, "settling down" had told Ellen he was being banished from Savannah…and now she'd decided to wreak havoc on the Robillard family!

Ellen had chosen to wed a short, vulgar fossil…a howling leprechaun, this ancient, fortyish Gerald O'Hara. Why Ellen, why? Phillippe had wanted to scream in her face, but of course to Ellen he was now invisible.

There had been so many of Phillippe's friends, who had been in love with sweet Ellen, but she ignored them…boys who had just waited for Phillippe to get out of the way. And then this tiny Irishman came to town, related to vulgar little moneymen from County Cork.

Just as Hobie Lafrienere was flirting with Ellen a bit, the little bastard pushes up to her, with that drunken, wizened grin.

"Yer quite the damsel" he'd said to Ellen his grotesque little chin sweating, at the Moncreif's violin recital. This, while Aunt Pauline had gagged nearby.

How on earth had Gerald O'Hara charmed little Ellen? Could she have been that angry at her family? How could Ellen imagine having marital relations with such a—freckled lizard?

Phillippe had died barely at the end of his teens, and like most adolescents, the idea of any dealings with someone in their forties, to say nothing of marriage, was impossible.

Why had the Almighty punished Phillippe like this? Phillippe's spirit had stood screaming at Ellen as she sat next to her little sewing box (which held the gold buttonhook) and took the red nosed creature's ugly little County Cork hand and said "I will marry you, Mister O'Hara."

Would that Phillippe be done with it after this, but he had followed the gold buttonhook across Georgia to a drafty plantation (and no, they don't give ghosts a seat on trains, it had been a dreadful journey.

There, at the plantation Phillippe watched his beautiful little cousin go to work, fifteen years of age, struggling to manage a grotesque agrarian nightmare.

He had been mystified (Phillippe was entirely selfish) with Ellen's interest in medically assisting the sick field hands and area neighbors. He alone had known of Ellen's quiet love affairs with Jim Tarleton, whose horse obsessed wife was obviously, despite their eight offspring, a Daughter of Sappho, and the courtly but ravenous John Wilkes.

And then Phillippe had entertained himself over time as Ellen's tomboyish beauty of a daughter, little Katie Scarlett had been born, grown up raising hell all the way…only to do the same revengeful stupid thing! Couldn't have Wilkes, marries his milksop cousin.

And wasn't that revolting. The little creep's hands trembled, this Charles Hamilton as he stared at Scarlett at the wedding…he couldn't figure out how he'd gotten so lucky, much as Gerald O'Hara had, seventeen years before.

But Scarlett, like her mother, couldn't just walk it off, these resentments; no…she had to take marital action! And poor Phillippe, he couldn't be an interesting ghost like Blackbeard, no, he must witness poor judgment in French-Irish women.

Phillippe had entirely approved when Stuart Tarleton had shown up, screaming and threatening to murder all in sunder if his lady-love Scarlett, went through with this nonsense. But of course Scarlett had perversely married Charles Hamilton anyway, and then born him a mealy mouthed child…but by that time Hamilton had died in military training camp…of a silly war. (Though Phillippe would have enjoyed participation, it was to be sure. All that shooting, and deserted wives, and that sort of thing.)

Then, widowed, Scarlett marries an elderly storekeeper, who the idiot second daughter Suellen was going to wed. So Sue hitches up with a peg-legged tobacco spitter…and little Careen enters a nunnery, because her beau of about six weeks died in the war. Again, Phillippe wondered if there was a strain of mental illness in the women in the family.

And then Phillippe had been interested to find that Scarlett had married again, to a fellow Gold Rush adventurer, Captain Butler, though of course Phillippe had been killed in his detour in Louisiana. Phillippe was beginning to think that he should have just stayed home and played whist.

Yes, things were rather boring for Phillippe, as he was stranded always within twenty feet of the gold buttonhook, which remained for decades in the sewing box, on the little desk in Ellen's office.

When Ellen had died of typhoid, Phillippe had hoped she might join him as a spirit, but no, she'd gone directly Above, in an instant. And so Phillippe just hung about the sewing box, waiting for something to happen.

This had been especially annoying when all the talk of Scarlett and Peg-Leg Will's affair had gone on for most of the gossip had centered with clucking women sitting near the sewing box, and of course poor Phillippe, eternally nineteen had been unable to wander as far as wherever Scarlett and Will were actually having their fascinating assignation.

One day, in a fit of sentiment, Scarlett had taken the sewing box with her to Atlanta, and after forty years of haunting Tara, Phillippe was somewhat gratified to visit a city that he'd not seen since his (living) early teens.

The nervous, querulous Aunt Pittypat had actually borrowed the gold buttonhook and kept it for some weeks, and Phillippe had been tortured to a series of breathtakingly dull calls on staid matrons…

Phillippe had observed that Aunt Pitty was a bit of a kleptomaniac when she went into stores, and enjoyed setting servants off against each other with comments like "I see your Jilda still does a much better job at cleaning the parlor, now that you've sent Phaedra to clean the kitchen, tee-hee hee."

Phillippe's ethereal stomach had turned more than once as Aunt Pitty, on the verge of senility, had once used the gold buttonhook to clean her nose.

But then Scarlett had taken the buttonhook back, and noting it was pure gold, began carrying it around with her, and then life, or whatever Phillippe's curious existence or non-existence could be called, became quite interesting.

Not always in a charming way. Once Phillippe had been forced to endure (when Scarlett had left the buttonhook in the back room of the mercantile) her sodomite son having relations with a half-breed Negro youth on a bag of sorghum. What a family I was born into, Phillippe had thought, as he'd floated above the grunting youths. Was nothing sacred?

And Phillippe had of course agreed with Butler that his viewings of Ashley Wilkes made him just saddened to see men like that survived…it was good Wilkes had absconded.

But at other times, it seemed that Scarlett was redeeming the Robillard name. She was quite the little business woman, and Phillippe quite enjoyed it when Scarlett's estranged husband, Captain Butler, discovered that he would be unable to buy up all the shares to take over her sawmill, as another investor, a Dr. Klauder, had taken quite a financial interest.

"What's wrong, Rhett?" Scarlett had asked one afternoon with a smile as Rhett Butler fumed. "I was helpless when you were taking over rights to the sawmill to be what you called helpful, though I know you were angry about Ashley Wilkes's temporary management. Now he's disappeared, so you can't hang him, why not hang me?

But now I have Dr. Klauder, who has stock in the mills, and we will keep you at bay, dearest. Come now, you know if you weren't involved in this personally, you'd congratulate me for getting a little power, business wise. We're both scoundrels, right? That's what you're always telling me."

"Dammit, Scarlett. I have paid hard cash for that mill, and I don't want any damned interference!"

Phillippe floated in a sitting position just above the counter separating Scarlett and Rhett. He was quite amused. Butler's face grew red and he paced a bit and Phillippe wondered if Butler would actually swing on Scarlett. Things were certainly getting hot and heavy, weren't they?

Finally, a bit of fun.

"Miz Scarlett, she think she got Mist' Rhett in a bine, right, Fee-Leep?"

Startled, Phillippe turned to the first voice to directly address him in nearly half a century. Next to him was another floating figure, an obese grizzled black woman, also floating despite her incredible weight, up in the air.

It was Mammy, who Philippe had never liked much. Mammy had bad-mouthed him to Ellen, when they were children, and then he'd had to watch Mammy waddle around bossing everyone at Tara until she'd moved to Atlanta with Scarlett and suffered a stroke. Apparently she had left her corpus now.

"You doan recker-nize me, Mist' Fee-leep?" The ugly old face smiled. "Yeah you do. You done broke Miss Ellen's little heart when she nigh up to a june-bug, an' I had to hole the pieces, put em back together. Ah knows you took huh pearl without price, too."

Phillippe blanched, as much as an already pale spirit could, It was quite true. He had taken Ellen's virginity, as well as the "pearls" of many of the Savannah lasses.

"Did you just pass, Mammy?" Phillippe was desperate to change the subject. Imagine it, he was to haunt Scarlett, and Mammy was to haunt him?

"Runnin' off to New Awlins lak a damn fool." My she was sassy for a house nigger now. Of course Phillippe couldn't beat her or sell her.

"You must understand Mammy, I was ordered by Ellen's father to leave. I couldn't stay around there." But it was true, Phillippe could have done anything he liked. He was not interested in staying around poor Ellen, and Mammy had been kind enough not to alert her ward to the inequalities of the affection. But she was giving it to him now.

"Youse was just a coward, Fee-leep!"

And things had just begun to get interesting with Scarlett and Butler! To be saddled with a judgmental darky. What balderdash!

"You jes' wanted to prance around lak a peacock, you ain't got no claim on Miss Ellen 'r anythin' else. That po' chile, she done wasted her life fo' you."

Phillippe tried desperately to ignore Mammy and focus on the drama at hand.

Rhett was now shaking his fist in Scarlett's face, but Scarlett looked unperturbed.

"Cap'n Butlah woan hit Miss Scarlett. He's a gemp-mum through an' through, though he be a scallywag and a blackguard."

It was difficult, after all these pleasant spiritual judgmental years to have a fellow editorialist, Phillippe thought bitterly.

"You will find that I have dispatched with your precious co-investor, Dr. Klauder" Rhett said venomously, his moustache right in Scarlett's face. "I still have not discovered who will inherit his share of the—"

"It is obviously a matter of small penis syndrome that has fuelled his rage" came a strong German voice to the left of Phillippe. "I could tell when he shot me, der Captain was making up for an obvious rage deficiency."

Indeed, floating on Philippe's other side was a chubby bearded gentleman, complete with meerschaum pipe and pince-nez spectacles.

The ethereal world was getting much too crowded, Phillippe pondered. Could he make some deal with the Devil to be released from his bondage to the infernal gold buttonhook?

"Zis Butler is example of overwrought American masculinity. I was unable to reason with him, or perhaps him me, when he ordered me to sell my shares, rather surrender them, and so he shot me like a dog, and then dropped my corpse into a Milledgeville pigpen to be eaten."

Why couldn't he haunt the damned hogs then?, Phillippe fumed.

Rhett had not finished his diatribe either. "I've spent money I didn't need to spend on you and Ashley Wilkes and this infernal business of yours. You promised me when we married that you were not going to neglect me for this ridiculous company—and these sawmills."

"Rhett, I am never, never going to ever, ever depend on anyone else for support." Scarlett said, looking distractedly out the window. But then the green eyes focused right in on her husband.

"Fiddle-dee-dee, when I think about how little I knew about where the food, where the trinkets came from, before the war. And then during the war, when I was at Tara and had NOTHING."

"I had a commitment, I wanted to fulfill an admittedly foolish sentiment to serve the Cause, Scarlett, but it was there."

"What nonsense. You men use guns and marching as a way to avoid responsibility. I wish you'd been shot to death. I worked myself to the bone, and when I visited you in jail you laughed at my gnarled hands from picking cotton, you scoundrel."

Rhett's eyes grew damp. "I know it must have been very difficult for you, trying to keep all those people fed—"

"Fat lot of help you were! You ran off with the Army, in a war you knew couldn't be won. You wasted eight months on the Cause you derided!"

"Yes, Captain Butler shows evidence of borderline personality disorder" muttered Dr. Klauder's spirit vengefully. "A man like dis should not be allowed to wander free."

"White men love to shoot dem guns" Mammy commented on Phillippe's other side.

Phillippe felt as if he were sitting in an opera booth with gossiping old women.

"But Scarlett, I could have made it all up to you when we married. You could have sold all that rubbish from Kennedy, and invested the money, perhaps making nearly half of what you've made now, with none of the effort. It's such a waste."

Rhett was getting emotional now, and he sat down in a chair, waving his muscular arms.

"I worked myself to death as a blockade runner during the war. I chased the Gold Rush before that, and risked my neck hustling poker. But I'm done now. I can relax. You could relax. We could have a well deserved retirement together. If only—"

"But you said you wouldn't give me another chance." Scarlett interrupted with annoyance. "I don't get another chance, even when I told you eight years ago that I loved you, right after Melanie's death. I don't have time for self-abnegation."

Rhett shook his head dispiritedly.

"Now, now's the chance, woman!" Phillippe shouted to Scarlett's deaf ear. "Tell him you love him! Sell the stupid mill! What a waste!"

"He is a murdering psychopath." Dr. Klauder observed with a flush of his pipe. "Butler should be hanged."

"You should have stayed in yo' country 'stead of makin' trouble here in Atlant-er." Mammy said grimly.

Rhett looked up at Scarlett with brimming eyes. "Perhaps we can—forget it. You'll never give me another chance, and I am not going to let myself in for another bout of misery with you, Scarlett. If you like, I will give you the stocks to the business, free and clear. I'm—I've had enough."

Rhett threw a bunch of papers on the table and signed them, and was not surprised to see his wife's eyes take them in, greedily. "Now you can start all over again, and if Ashley Wilkes ever returns, divorce me and you can run the whole business to hell together."

Rhett got up and walked out of the mercantile, and Scarlett stood up. "Wait…wait!"

And then she sat back down, shaking her head, and the three ghosts continued to observe, cattily, as indeed they had nothing else to do.

Some weeks after this, the gold buttonhook had been stolen by an impoverished Carpetbagger, and Mammy,Phillippe, and Dr. Klauder had been taken to their first opium den.


	8. Chapter 8

Belle turned restlessly in her bed. Finally, she had stopped coughing. She looked around the room, the bejeweled curtains, the Charles XI furniture…it had been fun being a madame. There was poor Silas, fallen asleep on the divan. Poor boy.

Silas had so wanted to be like his father. But there had been so many barriers. First, the child had been tongue-tied, and you couldn't understand a word he said. That would stop you from brilliance as a con man, just right there. But also, Silas was as dumb as a bag of rice.

The door suddenly opened, and Urbana looked in. "You need some soup, Miz Watling?"

Belle shuddered. Urbana was almost as poor a cook as she was a bedmate. "Fellate, don't fillet" the Presbyterian minister had screamed as Priapus had tended to the aftermath of one of Urbana's early sessions…and then they'd put her in the kitchen, which had been not much better. Peaches and Debbie had wanted to rename Urbana Salmonella, but not everyone is hygienic, perhaps.

"Well if you want something? Otherwise I'll jes' go downstairs and knit in the parlor."

"N-no honey, why don't you go for a walk—you-you scare the men a little, darlin'" Priapus had insisted that Urbie's skin would clear up, but Lord a-mighty she was twenty-three years old!

Urbana smiled happily, scratched her unibrow, and slammed the door a little hard.

Belle winced, and looked again at the slumbering Silas.

A handsome boy, looked just like Rhett, without the moustache—Silas had no facial hair at twenty-six, although Rhett told Belle once that he himself had begun to shave once a month at ELEVEN.

But Silas always wanted somethin' for nothin', or to get cash easily, in an interesting way…got a whore for a Ma and a blackguard father, why not? But Si had taken up with some little tramp who'd gotten him to do all the stealing and run the errands, and then he'd been arrested, and Rhett had had to get him out of an Americus jail, and the boy was home here at the bawdy house—playing the piano in the parlor, which he could do relatively well—and of course planning to leave again and start some new, stupid scheme…it was just sad.

Belle could never understand why someone who was given as much free money as her son was, by she and his daddy would go out trying to fight a battle he was unskilled at. He was a damn fine piano player, they'd sent him away to school to learn music and art and all the fripperies as a child, and he'd lived at the school in Macon undisturbed during the bloody four year massacre, the damn war.

Eating venison and lobster while the rest of the South was making do on hard peas and okra…wearing velvet jackets and having a good time, and all he could think about was his Pa, the blockade runner, and how he wanted to be a rich rascal, too.

Belle had HAD to be a rascal. She'd escaped her schizophrenic mama's razor strop and the entire white trash swampland of the Kissimee River, with the embezzling selectman of St. Johns, County, Florida, at the age of thirteen…

Belle had been thirteen, that is, poor Addis Smoot, her first husband had not quite made it to age forty-two when he'd been hit in the head with a shovel by a prospective second husband. If you get out of the Everglades, you can really see life.

Two years and five husbands later, Belle had arrived in the little summit called Standing Peachtree, which then evolved into the Atlanta section of Five Points. A helpful sixth husband had changed Belle's name from Boniface Wartburg to Belle Watling, and found her work that she turned out to be real good at in Madame Clarke's sporting house…and truly, Belle had had thirty-eight good years in the business.

A long, hacking cough came. Oh, crimes. She was going to have to have Priapus come up here—Priapus was a former medico who was more interested in laudanum than surgery, and he worked for Belle and her friends full time… taking bullets out of the James Gang, treating the many cases of syphilis…but Priapus couldn't help Belle for long.

She wasn't going to reach her fifty-fourth birthday—and she had to talk to Rhett. Rhett was obsessed with that silly sow, Scarlett O'Hara. He somehow thought that if he could take away her sawmills and her store—she'd return to being a good wife and helpmate. Men were so lost—they reached the age of about twelve and just stayed there in bigger and more aging bodies.

Belle had to find someone to run the house after she was gone. Priapus, capable doctor that he was—couldn't mess with numbers. He was planning to take the jarred babies from his many operations, his "pickled punks" and join a carnival any day now…no amount of morphine would bribe him to stay, anyhow.

And none of the girls Belle currently had working were really bright enough to handle the business end of prostitution. And if they were, would they be willing to keep on the older women, who no longer could bring in clients, who Belle housed out of sympathy? Most whores were cruelly practical.

Peaches certainly would throw Urbana out if she were put in charge. She might even talk Silas into shooting her, so she could give the name to a more fetching wench…

Who would take over the house? Belle had been only twenty when Madame Clarke had passed, and had gone into management almost immediately, and with ease. Shame that Scarlett O'Hara wasn't a whore—she apparently was an effective businesswoman. But if Rhett took the sawmills, Scarlett might need an occupation.

Belle laughed, and hacked miserably…oh God. What would she do?

But Rhett—he might understand. He might be able to run the house, perhaps give Silas the idea that he would take it over in time (ridiculous) and keep him away, banging the ivories, and out of trouble. Where was Rhett, damn it?


End file.
